&rf     J*Y*  ^  ••/?• 

1  he  Thsfory  or 

«u^  t«X 


And  Its  Future 

Robert  Ellis  Thompson 


THE  HISTORY  OF 

THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

AND  ITS  FUTURE 


THE  HISTORY  OF 

THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

AND  ITS  FUTURE 


BY 
ROBERT  ELLIS  THOMPSON,  LL.D. 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LONDON 

J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT   COMPANY 

1914 


COPYRIGHT,  1914,  BY  J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT  COMPANY 


PUBLISHED   MAY, 


PRINTED    BY  J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT   COMPANY 

AT  THE  -WASHINGTON  SQUARE  PRESS 

PHILADELPHIA,  U.  S.  A. 


To 
WILLIAM  LISETER  AUSTIN 

IN   GRATEFUL  RECOGNITION   OF  MUCH    KINDNESS 


865676 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

INTRODUCTION 9 

I.    THE  OLD  HALL  (SKALI) 17 

II.    FROM  HALL  TO  HOUSE      45 

III.  THE  TOWN-HOUSE 72 

IV.  THE  LATER  TOWN-HOUSE 83 

V.    THE  HOUSE  OF  TO-DAY 105 

VI.    THE  HOUSE  THAT  is  TO  BE:  ITS  ORGANIZATION     .  121 
VII.    THE  HOUSE  THAT  is  TO  BE:  ITS  EQUIPMENT  .    .    .  140 

VIII.    THE  STREETS  OF  THE  FUTURE 153 

IX.    CONCLUSION      .  163 


INTRODUCTION.    ..--.;, 

SOME  eighty  years  ago  a  young  Lutheran 
clergyman,  the  Rev.  Eilert  Sundt,  was  giv- 
ing religious  instructions  to  a  class  of 
prisoners  in  the  House  of  Correction  at 
Christiania  in  Norway.  His  attention  was 
drawn  to  one  member  of  the  class,  who  was 
a  marked  contrast  to  the  tall,  fair-haired  and 
blue-eyed  Norsemen.  This  man  was  of 
short  stature,  with  dark  hair  and  black  eyes. 
He  was  very  forward  in  answering  the  ques- 
tions Mr.  Sundt  put  to  the  class,  but  he 
generally  answered  them  wrongly.  When 
the  instruction  was  finished  the  young  chap- 
lain took  the  man  apart,  and  asked  him  who 
and  what  he  was.  He  found  that  this  was 
one  of  the  Fante-folk,  as  the  Norwegians 

call  the  Gypsies;  and  he  learned  from  him 

9 


INTRODUCTION 

many  particulars — not  always  authentic — 
as  to  tile  habits  and  beliefs  of  his  people. 

The  matter  interested  Mr.  Sundt  so  much 
that  he  sent  a  memoir  to  the  government  of 
the  country,  telling  what  the  man  had  told 
him  of  the  Fante-folk,  their  numbers  and 
their  mode  of  life,  and  suggesting  that  an 
effort  be  made  to  induce  them  to  give  up 
their  nomadic  habits,  and  to  settle  down  as 
orderly  and  industrious  citizens.  The 
authorities  in  Christiania  accepted  the  sug- 
gestion, and  commissioned  Mr.  Sundt  him- 
self to  travel  through  Norway,  and  to  meet 
these  wanderers  with  the  offer  of  help  in 
casting  off  their  vagabondage,  and  finding 
permanent  homes.1 

In  the  main  purpose  of  his  tour  through 

1  Beretning  om  Fante-  eller  Landstrygerfolket  i  Norge. 
Bidrag  til  Kundskab  om  de  laveste  Samfundsvorholde. 
Christiania:  1850;  Andet  Oplag.  Pp.  vi,  394.  Christiania: 
1852.  Fortsat  Beretning  om  Fante-Folket.  Christiania: 
1859.  The  work  is  summarized  in  Vagabundenthum  und 
Wanderleben  in  Norwegen.  Von  A.  Etzel.  Berlin:  1870. 

10 


INTRODUCTION 

Norway,  Mr.  Sundt  had  no  great  success. 
The  habitual  life  of  the  Gypsies  had  too 
many  attractions  for  them  to  admit  of  his 
getting  the  hearing  he  hoped.  But  he  was 
what  Carlyle  calls  "  a  credible  person  with 
eyes,"  and  he  managed  to  learn  a  great  deal 
about  the  Norse- folk  themselves.  For  one 
thing,  he  noticed  that  on  a  single  farm 
might  be  found  not  only  one  farmhouse, 
but  two,  three,  four,  and  in  one  case  as  many 
as  eight.  Each  of  these  seemed  to  represent 
a  stage  in  the  development  of  the  country- 
house,  and  each  in  its  turn  had  been  dis- 
carded as  a  home,  but  retained  as  a  store- 
house for  the  crops,  even  hay.  By  such 
study  as  he  could  make  of  these  successions 
of  houses,  he  got  light  on  the  development 
of  the  house,  not  of  Norway  alone,  but  of 
northern  Europe  generally.2 

2  Bygningsskikken  i  Norge.    Af  Eilert  Sundt.    Christiania: 
1863. 

11 


INTRODUCTION 

The  farm-houses  of  Norway,  like  its  old 
churches,  were  constructed  of  pine-wood,  a 
material  which  lasts  as  long  as  any  other 
when  well  taken  care  of  and  protected  from 
the  weather  by  paint.  There  are  houses 
still  standing,  which  were  in  use  when  that 
country  was  Christianized  by  Us  two  kings 
Olaf,  early  in  the  eleventh  century.  Even 
in  America  there  are  such  houses,  which  are 
still  inhabited  after  a  quarter  of  a  millen- 
nium. And  the  early  firing  arrangements 
exposed  houses  to  conflagration  much  less 
than  in  later  days,  and  far  less  than  in  the 
cities  at  all  times. 

Besides  these  monuments  of  domestic 
architecture,  there  is  what  I  may  call  a  run- 
ning commentary  on  them  in  the  saga  litera- 
ture of  the  Scandinavian  north,  which 
abounds  in  references  to  household  ways. 
Text  and  commentary  go  together  for  the 
student  of  domestic  antiquities  in  those 

12 


INTRODUCTION 

northern  lands.  Prof.  Troels  Lund  of  the 
University  of  Copenhagen  has  made  a  close 
study  of  both,  and  has  enlarged  our  knowl- 
edge of  them  by  literary  and  historical  in- 
vestigations, always  acknowledging  his 
obligations  to  his  predecessors  in  this  field. 
In  fact  Mr.  Sundt's  "  Building  Fashions  in 
Norway,"  and  Prof.  Lund's  "  Every-day 
Life  in  the  Scandinavian  North " 3  are 
memorable  books,  through  the  light  they 
have  cast  on  a  familiar  and  naturally 
interesting  branch  of  human  history. 

We  have  in  English  antiquarian  treatises 
on  houses,  of  a  descriptive  character,  and 
often  of  much  interest.  But  I  know  of  none 
of  them  that  trace  the  genetic  development 
of  the  house  from  its  beginnings  to  the 
present  time.  This  I  have  attempted  in  this 
short  history. 

*Das  Tagliche  Leben  in  Skandinavien  wahrend  des 
Sechszehnten  Jahrhunderts.  Von  Troels  Lund.  Kopen- 
bagen:  1882. 

13 


INTRODUCTION 

I  must  caution  my  readers  against  a  too 
literal  construction  of  my  statements.  It 
is  not  meant  that  the  course  of  development 
I  have  traced  is  that  which  was  followed  with 
mechanical  regularity  in  every  case.  Houses 
are  the  work  of  men,  not  of  mere  mechanical 
forces.  Being  men,  they  sought  to  adjust 
their  domestic  surroundings  to  their  own 
tastes  and  preferences.  In  doing  so,  how- 
ever, they  also  gave  great  scope  to  social 
tradition.  Partly  to  avoid  the  trouble  in- 
volved in  getting  anything  done  out  of  the 
common,  and  partly  to  avoid  social  criti- 
cism, which  is  nowhere  so  keen  as  among 
simple  people,  they  usually  built  as  their 
neighbors  did.  But  in  many  cases  they 
showed  independence  of  taste  and  judg- 
ment in  the  construction,  arrangement  and 
adornment  of  their  houses.  No  row  of 
houses  in  an  old  mediaeval  town  would  ex- 
hibit such  a  wearisome  uniformity  as  is  to 

14 


INTRODUCTION 

be  found  even  in  the  wealthier  parts  of 
modern  cities.  Both  the  house-owner,  for 
whom  the  work  was  done,  and  the  workmen 
engaged  in  its  erection,  showed  far  more 
independence  in  design  than  is  to  be  found 
in  modern  men  of  either  class.  It  was  an 
age  of  living  and  original  architecture, 
while  modern  building,  except  among  the 
Jain  sect  in  India,  as  Mr.  Ferguson  points 
out,  is  lifeless  arid  imitative. 

Let  me  not,  however,  be  charged  with 
representing  a  degree  of  uniformity  in  the 
development  of  the  house,  which  did  not 
exist  in  fact.  It  is  impossible  to  embody  in 
any  story  the  amount  of  variety  which 
actually  exists  in  human  affairs.  As  Carlyle 
says,  narrative  is  linear,  but  life  is  solid, 
and  can  be  represented  but  imperfectly  in 
literature.  What  I  have  aimed  at  is  the 
selection  of  what  is  typical  and  normal  out 
of  a  boundless  variety  of  facts. 

15 


INTRODUCTION 

It  is  my  hope  that  my  small  book  will 
make  to  every  reader  more  intelligible,  and 
therefore  more  interesting,  the  home  he  lives 
in;  and  that  from  what  he  is  told  here  of  the 
reform  in  the  past,  he  may  judge  more  justly 
of  what  are  the  reforms  demanded  by  the 
present  and  the  future. 


THE  HISTORY  OF 

THE  DWELLING  HOUSE 

AND  ITS  FUTURE 

CHAPTER  I 
THE  OLD  HALL  (SKALI) 

MR.  MACMASTER,  in  his  "  History  of  the 
American  People,"  says  of  the  house  which 
President  Jefferson  built  for  himself  at 
Monticello,  that  "  of  all  the  houses  built  of 
man,  none  more  surely  was  so  much  a  part 
of  the  owner.  What  the  shell  is  to  the  tor- 
toise, all  that  was  Monticello  to  Jefferson. 
The  structure  had  grown  with  his  growth, 
and  bore  all  the  marks  of  his  individuality." 

In  a  broad  sense,  though  perhaps  in  a  less 
striking  degree,  this  is  what  every  type  of 
house  has  been  to  the  group  which  lived  in  it. 
As  the  shell-fish  excretes  its  shell,  the  family 

2  1? 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

has  excreted,  as  it  were,  the  home  suitable 
to  its  needs  and  expressive  of  its  character. 
The  need  of  a  home  of  some  sort  for  the 
shelter  and  protection  of  the  child  must  have 
been  felt  very  early.  Sociologists  are  only 
now  awakening  to  the  importance  of  the 
child  as  a  motive  to  the  great  process  we  call 
civilization,  and  to  the  fact  that  the  love  of 
father  and  mother  for  child  antedated  the 
love  of  husband  and  wife.  For  the  child's 
sake  were  undertaken  the  labors  by  which 
men  emerged  from  the  savage's  dependence 
upon  what  nature  furnished  without  other 
toil  than  that  of  gathering  her  gifts.  It  was 
for  the  child's  sake  that  the  field  was  cleared 
of  weeds,  fenced  and  tilled,  and  the  plants 
whose  seeds  or  roots  were  most  suitable  for 
human  food  were  sought  and  encouraged. 
For  the  child's  sake  softer  clothing  than  the 
skins  of  wild  beasts  was  obtained.  And  for 

the  child's  sake  a  home  was  devised  to  pro- 
is 


THE  OLD  HALL   (SKALI) 

tect  it  against  the  heat  of  summer  and  the 
cold  of  winter.  Its  little  hand  has  held  the 
marshal's  baton  in  the  great  march  of 
human  progress. 

Of  the  house  devised  for  the  child's  safety 
there  are  three  principal  types.  These  are 
the  tree-house,  the  cave-house,  and  the  hall. 

1.  The  tree-house  belongs  to  the  tropics, 
where  it  still  survives  in  the  Philippine 
Islands  and  some  other  countries  of  south- 
eastern Asia. 

The  tree  plays  a  very  notable  part  in  the 
sacred  traditions,  the  worship  and  the  econo- 
mies of  primitive  mankind.  The  account  of 
Eden,  and  of  the  life  of  the  early  patriarchs, 
in  the  Hebrew  records  reflects  this.  To 
savage  man  the  tree  was  a  living  thing  and 
the  first  object  he  found  in  that  upward 
gaze,  by  which  he  searched  for  the  Power 
which  protected  and  controlled  his  life.  It 
fed,  clothed,  and  sheltered  him.  In  its 

19 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

branches  he  found  a  refuge  from  floods,  wild 
beasts,  and  noxious  insects.  He  made  it  his 
home  by  erecting  a  scaffold  within  its 
branches,  and  fashioned  its  leaves  into  a 
thatched  roof  to  keep  off  sun  and  rain.  Here 
he  found  his  safety  and  that  of  his  family, 
in  that  early  age  when  he  fled  before  the  wild 
beasts,  because  he  had  not  yet  devised  the 
weapons  which  were  to  make  them  fly  be- 
fore him. 

Mr.  Henry  Savage-Landor,  in  his  valu- 
able book  of  travels  in  the  Philippines,  shows 
us  the  tree-house  as  still  used  by  some  of  the 
natives  of  that  archipelago.  At  one  point 
n  his  journey  he  was  expecting  to  come 
upon  a  native  village,  but  at  first  could  see 
no  sign  of  it.  Then  he  observed  a  rough 
ladder  leaning  against  a  tall  tree.  Climbing 
it,  he  came  to  a  sort  of  bridge-path  from 
tree  to  tree,  and  on  following  this  he  came 
upon  the  village. 

20 


THE  OLD  HALL   (SKALI) 

In  another  book  on  the  islands  of  south- 
eastern Asia  Mr.  Savage-Landor  describes 
the  Manobos  of  Mindanao,  one  of  the 
largest  tribes  of  that  island,  as  "  tree-dwell- 
ing," adding  that  their  houses  "  could  be 
seen  on  tree-tops  of  immense  height,  some 
at  an  elevation  of  over  fifty  feet  above  the 
ground.  .  .  .  Their  principal  reason  for  the 
high  location  of  their  houses  is  that  they 
may  be  protected  against  enemies."  In  an- 
other part  of  the  Philippine  group  he  found 
houses  "  constructed  on  the  tops  of  trees, 
the  highest  branches  having  been  cut  to  a 
level,  so  as  to  form  supports  on  which  to  build 
these  inaccessible  houses.  One  house  on  the 
river  bank  was  on  piles  eighteen  feet  high." 

In  Central  Africa,  in  districts  where 
wild  beasts  abound,  the  natives  live  in  huts 
like  gigantic  beehives,  fixed  among  the 
branches  of  the  huge  baobab  tree,  sometimes 

thirty  families  in  one  tree. 

21 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

The  passage  from  the  perch  in  the  tree 
to  the  ground  was  gradual.  In  Burmah,  the 
Philippines  and  other  parts  of  southeastern 
Asia  the  house  often  occupies  a  lofty  plat- 
form, and  is  accessible  only  by  a  ladder. 
And  the  association  of  the  tree  with  the 
house  still  lingered  in  the  ground-built  house. 
The  house  of  Ulysses  in  Ithaca  was  built 
round  a  sacred  olive,  whose  trunk  its  owner 
had  carved  into  a  bed,  so  that  Penelope 
identified  her  husband  by  suggesting  that  his 
bed  had  been  moved,  and  evoking  his  denial 
of  the  possibility  of  this. 

Recent  excavations  show  us  that  the  ear- 
liest Greek  houses  were  built  of  wood,  roofed 
with  leaves,  and  circular  in  form,  thus  testify- 
ing to  their  arboreal  descent.  To  enlarge 
the  space  the  circle  afterwards  was  made  an 
oval,  with  posts  of  wood  to  hold  up  the  roof. 
Later  still  the  oval  either  became  a  rectangle, 


THE  OLD  HALL  (SKALI) 

or  rectangular  at  one  end  while  retaining 
the  curves  at  the  other, — the  origin  of  the 
apse  in  later  buildings.  The  interior  was 
one  large  room  (megarion),  with  the  hearth 
in  the  centre,  and  the  door  on  the  south  side 
(not  on  the  west  as  in  the  northern  hall), 
and  sometimes  opening  into  an  anteroom  or 
porch.  The  division  into  rooms  came  later. 
There  was  nothing  distinguished  about  the 
domestic  architecture  of  early  Greece.  Even 
Athens  before  the  Persian  War  was  made 
up  of  narrow  streets,  lined  with  closely  built 
houses  of  wood  and  stone,  with  a  projecting 
upper  story,  and  sometimes  gardens  in  front. 
These  were  the  homes  of  the  women  and 
children  rather  than  of  the  men,  who  spent 
their  days  in  public,  and  did  not  receive 
guests  in  their  houses.4 

The  migrants  to  northern  latitude  carried 

4  See  the  article  "Haus"  in  Pauly-Wissowa,  new  edition. 
23 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

with  them  memories  of  the  connection  of  the 
tree  with  the  house.  In  some  of  the  great 
halls  of  the  Norse  chieftains,  which  were 
at  times  two  hundred  feet  long  and  sixty 
wide,  a  great  tree  grew  in  the  midst.  Wil- 
liam Morris,  in  his  "  Sigurd  the  Volsung," 
describes  the  "  branstock "  which  grew  in 
the  Hall  of  the  Volsung  king: 

So  therein  withal  was  a  marvel  and  a  glorious  thing 

to  see, 
For  amidst  of  its  midmost  hall-floor  sprang  up  a 

mighty  tree, 
That  reared  its  blessings  roofward,  and  wreathed 

the  roof-tree  dear 
With  the  glory  of  the  summer  and  the  garland  of 

the  year.    .    .    . 

When  men  tell  of  Volsung,   they  call  that  war- 
duke's  tree 
That  crowned  stem,  the  Branstock;  and  so  was  it 

told  to  me. 
So  there  was  the  throne  of  the  Volsung  beneath 

its  blossoming  bower, 
But  high   o'er  the   roof-crest  red   it  rose   'twixt 

tower  and  tower, 


THE  OLD  HALL  (SKALI) 

And  therein  were  the  wild  hawks  dwelling,  abiding 

the  dole  of  their  lord; 
And  they  wailed  high  over  the  wine,  and  laughed 

to  the  waking  sword. 

Then  at  the  ill-fated  wedding  of  the  Vol- 
sung  maiden  to  the  king  of  the  Goths,  Odin 
appears — 

Then  into  the    Volsung   dwelling  a  mighty  man 

there  strode, 
One-eyed    and    seeming    ancient,    yet    bright    his 

visage  glowed: 
Cloud-blue  was  the  hood  upon  him,  and  his  kirtle 

gleaming'-grey   .    .    . 
So  strode  he  to  the  Branstock  nor  greeted  any 

lord, 
But   forth   from  his   cloudiy   raiment   he   drew   a 

gleaming  sword, 
And  smote  it  deep  in  the  tree-bole,  and  the  wild 

hawks  overhead 
Laughed  'neath  the  naked  heaven  as  at  last  he 

spake  and  said, 
"  Earls  of  the  Goths,  and  Volsungs,  abide rs  on 

the  earth, 
Lo  there  amid  the  Branstock  a  blade  of  plenteous 

worth!  .   .   . 

25 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

Now  let  the  man  among  you  whose  heart  and  hand 

may  shift 
To  pluck  it  from  the  oakwood,  e'en  take  it  for 

my  gift." 

2.  In  prehistoric  times  the  people  of  at 
least  the  north  of  Europe  were  cave-dwellers, 
or  troglodytes.  An  opening  in  the  hillside, 
enlarged  and  strengthened,  if  not  con- 
structed, by  human  labor  and  skill,  gave 
safety  and  shelter  on  the  simplest  terms.  In 
such  caves  as  those  of  the  Neanderthal  and 
Cro-Magnon  we  find  the  oldest  human  re- 
mains of  men  contemporary  with  the  Mam- 
moth. Nor  has  this  type  of  home  passed 
away  even  yet.  Mr.  Kinglake,  in  his 
"  Eothen,"  mentions  finding  it  in  the  Cau- 
casus. John  Bellows  found  others  inhabited 
by  Armenians  on  the  frontier  of  Persia.  In 
Mexico  and  some  of  the  adjacent  parts  of 
America,  there  are  many  remains  of  cave- 
dwellings,  and  some  groups  who  still  make 


THE  OLD  HALL   (SKALI) 

their  home  "  in  the  clefts  of  the  rock,"  as 
Jeremiah  says  of  the  Edomites  (xlix,  16). 
In  the  French  valley  of  the  Loire  there  has 
been  a  sort  of  reversion  to  the  troglodyte 
type.  Some  twojnillions  of  the  people  now 
make  their  homes  in  the  caves  which  have 
been  excavated  in  quarrying  for  building- 
stone.  These  are  said  to  be  cool  in  summer 
and  warm  in  winter,  and  free  from  damp- 
ness. The  entrances  are  wreathed  with 
flowering  vines. 

Entered,  lighted  and  ventilated  through 
its  mouth,  the  cave-house  must  have  been 
smoky,  drafty  and  damp.  But  it  combined 
the  best  comfort  that  men  knew  with  com- 
parative safety.  So  our  fathers  made  the 
best  of  it. 

It  probably  was  not  its  discomfort,  but 
the  scarcity  of  caves,  which  led  to  a  change. 
When  a  migration  brought  a  people  into  an 
open  country,  where  there  were  no  hillsides 

27' 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

to  furnish  caves,  or  when  the  available  sup- 
ply of  caves  ran  short  of  the  numbers  of  the 
community,  the  next  step  was  to  construct 
artificial  caves.  The  more  conservative  peo- 
ples did  this  by  excavating  a  cave  under- 
ground, and  making  it  accessible  by  ladders. 
Xenophon,  in  his  "  Anabasis,"  describes  the 
cave  dwellings  of  this  sort  which  he  found  in 
Armenia,  where  indeed  they  still  exist.  In 
the  Aleutian  Islands  of  Alaska  the  primitive 
cave  is  perpetuated  by  underground  homes 
of  this  type. 

3.  The  preference  for  a  cave  constructed 
above  ground  may  be  said  to  have  led  to  the 
Hall,  and  thus  to  the  modern  house. 

Traces  of  the  influence  of  the  cave  as  a 
model  may  be  seen  in  its  construction.  The 
Hall  stood  east  and  west,  and  the  door  was 
placed  in  the  western  end,  as  it  had  been 
observed  that  caves  with  a  western  exposure 
were  the  more  comfortable,  giving  less  access 


THE  OLD  HALL  (SKALI) 

to  cold  winds.5  The  roof  was  pitched  high 
by  lofty  gables,  so  as  to  allow  room  for  the 
smoke  to  rise  out  of  contact  with  human 
eyes,  as  it  seldom  could  have  done  in  the 
cave.  The  walls  were  constructed  with  a 
frame-work  of  wood,  filled  with  kneaded 
clay;  though  some  halls  were  of  wood 
throughout.  The  roof  was  made  by  placing 
layers  of  birch-bark  over  the  beams  which 
ran  up  to  the  roof-tree,  and  covering  this 
with  sods,  which  were  cut  so  thick  that 
the  grass  and  the  weeds  went  on  growing. 
As  the  side  walls  were  very  low,  it  was  possi- 
ble for  goats,  sheep  and  even  pigs  to  climb 
upon  the  roof  and  graze  over  it.  As  the  lines 
of  the  building  were  irregular,  any  one  who 

5  May  not  this  have  had  as  much  to  do  with  the 
"  orientation  of  the  churches,"  as  any  idea  of  facing  toward 
Jerusalem?  Even  in  those  early  times  they  knew  enough 
of  geography  to  be  aware  that  a  building  standing  east 
and  west  in  a  northern  latitude  was  not  facing  toward  the 
Holy  City.  The  pagan  temples  also  stood  east  and  west, 
With  their  entrances  in  the  western  end. 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

approached  it  from  the  north  or  the  south 
might  have  mistaken  it  for  a  mound  of 
grass-grown  earth,  turned  to  grazing  uses. 

The  Hall  was  entered  through  an  opening 
in  the  western  gable,  which  looked  more  like 
a  window- space  than  a  doorway.  The  lintel 
was  brought  so  low,  and  the  threshold  was 
raised  so  high,  that  no  one  could  enter  with- 
out both  stooping  his  head  so  low  and  lift- 
ing his  foot  so  high,  that  he  could  be  de- 
spatched if  he  came  as  an  enemy.  The  vul- 
nerable point  of  the  building  was  not  the 
door,  but  the  window  (or  wind's  eye),  an 
opening  in  the  centre  of  the  roof.  From  that 
point  the  master  of  the  house  sometimes  was 
killed  by  arrow  or  javelin  as  he  sat  at  his 
fireside.  So  in  times  of  especial  danger,  an 
armed  man  was  posted  on  a  small  platform 
under  that  opening. 

Like  its  predecessor  the  cave-house,  the 
Hdll  at  first  was  one  great  room,  undivided 

30 


THE  OLD  HALL   (SKALI) 

by  partition-walls  or  floors  into  rooms  or 
stories.  Its  furniture  was  simple,  and 
usually  made  up  not  of  movables,  but  of 
fixtures.  The  principal  piece  was  the  "  long 
seat,"  which  ran  close  to  the  walls  on  the 
north  and  south  sides,  and  sometimes  across 
the  eastern  gable.  It  was  fastened  firmly  to 
the  wall  and  the  floor,  and  the  long  but 
narrow  table  in  front  of  it  sometimes  was 
mounted  on  trestles,  and  removable  when 
not  in  use;  but  in  others  was  fastened  to 
pillars  driven  into  the  ground.  When  the 
Grettir-Saga  would  give  us  an  impression 
of  the  violence  of  the  struggle  between 
Grettir  and  the  Vampire,  it  tells  us  that  the 
furniture  was  torn  from  its  fastenings  and 
flung  around  the  Hall. 

The  middle  of  the  long  seat  was  raised 
above  the  level  of  the  rest,  and  was  called 
the  High  Seat.  It  was  reserved  for  the 
master  of  the  Hall  and  his  wife,  while  a 

31 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

second  High  Seat  opposite  to  it  was  occu- 
pied by  distinguished  guests,  if  such  were 
present.6 

This  was  the  place  of  greatest  comfort, 
as  being  opposite  the  fire,  which  was  placed 
in  the  centre  of  the  Hall  on  flat  stones,  and 
served  to  light  and  warm  the  Hall,  as  well 
as  to  cook  the  food.  The  smoke  made  its 
way  to  the  roof,  and  some  of  it  passed  out 
through  the  window,  but  most  of  it  settled 
on  the  beams  and  balks  as  soot,  especially 
when  in  bad  weather  the  window  was  closed 
with  a  slightly  transparent  lid.  In  damp 
weather  it  absorbed  so  much  moisture  that 
its  weight  overcame  its  adhesion,  and  it 
came  down  in  showers.  Although  unpleas- 
ant, this  sprinkling  of  the  Hall  was  not  un- 
desirable, as  it  served  as  an  antiseptic  to 

'In  the  pagan  temples,  which  were  built  very  much  like 
the  Halls,  the  high  seat  was  the  place  of  the  three  chief 
gods  of  the  Norse  mythology — Odin,  Thor  and  Frey.  In 
Norway  Odin  generally  occupied  the  central  place,  as  the 
chief.  In  Iceland  Thor. 


THE  OLD  HALL   (SKALI) 

render  harmless  the  foulness  of  the  floor, 
which  was  covered  with  straw  or  rushes.  In 
these  the  dogs  lay  and  gnawed  the  bones 
flung  to  them.  In  this  on  cold  nights  were 
quartered  the  chickens  and  the  four-legged 
youth  of  the  barnyard,  as  there  were  no  out- 
buildings to  shelter  them.  And  when  the 
straw  rushes  grew  too  foul  for  endurance, 
they  brought  a  fresh  supply,  and  spread 
this  over  the  old. 

The  occupants  of  the  Hall  were  not  the 
natural  family — father,  mother,  children, 
and  possibly  servants — which  we  think  of  as 
making  up  a  household.  Such  a  group 
hardly  could  have  lived  by  itself  in  safety 
in  the  rough  times  which  preceded  the 
abolition  of  private  warfare.  It  would  have 
found  no  protection  from  any  public  au- 
thority, so  it  must  be  capable  of  self-defence. 
The  State  was  still  too  feeble  to  undertake 
police  duties  for  the  prevention  of  crime, 
although  it  already  had  acquired  authority 
a  33 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

to  punish  it  when  committed.  So,  in  a  very 
real  sense,  a  man's  house  was  his  castle,  and 
must  be  garrisoned  for  defence.  Sometimes 
the  garrison — called  in  Norse  the  hird,  and 
in  old  English  the  menie — was  composed  of 
the  real  or  the  supposed  kindred  of  the 
house-owner;  and  its  members  often  bore  a 
common  name, — that  of  an  "  eponymous  " 
ancestor.  More  often,  especially  in  the  case 
of  the  kings,  barons  (her sellers]  and  notable 
chiefs,  their  numbers  were  recruited  from 
voluntary  adherents,  who  showed  him  that 
personal  loyalty,  of  which  the  ancient  world 
knew  nothing,  and  which  was  the  Teutonic 
contribution  to  the  forces  which  mould 
political  institutions.7 

7  The  idea  of  representation,  which  made  possible  the 
existence  of  a  free  community  larger  than  a  city,  grew 
out  of  this  loyalty.  The  people  were  satisfied  with  what 
v~as  done  in  the  Witanagemote  at  Winchester  or  West- 
minster, if  it  were  done  with  the  approval  of  their  chiefs 
in  attendance  there.  It  was  to  them  as  if  they  all  were 
present  and  consented.  Is  it  not  this  feeling  which  under- 
lies the  title  of  the  popular  branch  of  the  English  legis- 
lature: "The  Commons  of  England  in  Parliament 
assembled  ?  " 

34 


THE  OLD  HALL   (SKALI) 

There  came  to  the  royal  Hall  of  Olaf  the 
Saint  (1017-1030)  an  aged  man,  who  asked 
to  be  taken  into  his  hird.  The  king  asked 
him  how  old  he  was,  and  he  confessed  that 
he  had  lost  the  count  of  his  years,  but  be- 
lieved they  were  above  one  hundred.  '  You 
must  have  seen  many  great  kings  in  your 
time,"  the  king  said.  "  I  have  been  with 
your  grandfather  Harold  the  Fair-haired, 
with  Eric  of  Sweden,  and  with  Gorm  the 
old  of  Danemark,"  he  replied.  "  And  which 
of  these  had  the  best  hird?  "  "  I  will  show 
you.  In  my  youth  I  went  to  the  court  of 
King  Eric,  and  asked  to  be  taken  into  his 
hird.  He  told  me  to  take  any  place  that  I 
could.  I  began  with  the  man  who  sat  on  his 
left  hand,  and  tried  to  turn  him  out,  but  I 
could  not,  nor  the  next,  nor  the  next,  until 
I  came  to  the  sixth.  Afterwards  I  went  to 
the  court  of  King  Gorm,  asked  the  same 
question  and  got  the  same  answer.  But  I 

35 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

was  halfway  to  the  door  of  the  Hall  before 
I  could  empty  a  place  for  myself  to  sit. 
Then  I  fared  north  to  the  court  of  King 
Harold,  and  he  also  gave  me  leave  to  take 
what  seat  I  could.  But  I  wrestled  with 
every  one  to  the  very  door  of  the  Hall,  be- 
fore I  could  unseat  any  man  of  them.  So 
I  think  King  Harold  had  the  finest  Tiird" 

The  position  of  a  member  of  the  house- 
hold was  no  idle  or  easy  one.  The  Nial-saga, 
which  Mr.  Dasent  has  done  into  English 
with  the  title,  "  The  Story  of  Burnt  Nial " 
(Edinburgh,  1861),  gives  a  vivid  idea  of 
what  went  on  in  one  district  of  Iceland  be- 
tween the  years  970  and  1014.  Thirty-five  of 
its  chapters  are  taken  up  with  "  killings  " 
either  of  individuals  or  of  groups,  of 
which  126  are  specified  by  name,  ending 
with  the  destruction  of  Nial's  whole  family, 
except  his  son-in-law,  Kari  Solmundson. 
Had  the  burners  been  so  fortunate  as  to 

36 


THE  OLD  HALL  (SKALI) 

kill  him  as  he  was  leaping  through  the  flame 
and  smoke,  they  might  have  escaped  all 
punishment  for  their  crime,  as  there  would 
have  been  left  no  one  competent  to  prosecute 
them  before  the  All-Thing.  What  Kari 
obtained  was  their  banishment  from  Iceland, 
besides  the  infliction  of  heavy  fines. 

Those  who  think  that  there  was  no  parallel 
to  this  in  other  countries,  should  look  into 
the  "  Paston  Letters  "  for  a  picture  of  the 
open  lawlessness  which  prevailed  in  Eng- 
land at  the  close  of  the  Middle  Ages.  Or 
into  Esprit  Flechier's  Memoires  sur  les 
Grands  Jours  d'Auvergne  (1844)  for  a 
lively  account  of  the  lawlessness  of  a  French 
province  in  1665-66.  Prosper  Merimee  in 
his  Columba  (1840)  has  shown  us  this  state 
of  society  perpetuating  itself  in  Corsica ;  and 
the  mountain  regions  of  the  American  states 
of  Kentucky  and  Tennessee  furnish  parallels 
in  the  new  world. 

37 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

Of  the  inmates  of  the  Hall,  the  chief 
occupied  a  social  position  as  central  and  as 
elevated  as  his  place  within  it.  Over  some 
of  its  occupants  he  had  the  authority  of  a 
father  as  well  as  chief,  and  he  had  the  final 
word  in  every  situation  which  called  for 
deliberation.  But  he  must  not  push  this 
authority  too  far.  His  hirdsmen  looked  to 
be  consulted  in  such  matters,  and  if  he  made 
the  exercise  of  his  authority  too  exacting, 
they  would  seek  a  more  courteous  master. 
Except  the  thralls,  captives  in  battle  or  their 
descendants,  they  were  as  free  as  himself; 
and  while  they  risked  life  and  limb  in  his 
defence  during  their  term  of  service,  they 
were  free  to  go  or  stay  when  it  ended. 

Among  the  signs  of  his  rank  were  the  two 
carved  posts,  which  separated  his  High  Seat 
from  the  rest  of  the  long  seat.  In  pagan 
times  these  terminated  in  images  of  Thor 
or  Odin.  When  the  Norwegian  barons  fled 

38 


THE  OLD  HALL   (SKALI) 

to  Iceland  from  the  "  violence  "  of  Harold 
the  Fair-haired,  they  carried  these  posts  with 
them,  and  on  approaching  land  they  threw 
them  overboard,  and  made  their  homes  wher- 
ever these  were  washed  ashore.  Another 
sacred  thing  was  the  cord  which  hung  down 
from  the  window  in  the  roof,  to  open  or 
shut  this ;  and  when  any  one  came  on  a  grave 
message  to  the  chief,  such  as  soliciting  the 
hand  of  his  daughter  in  marriage,  he  laid 
hold  of  this  cord  while  he  delivered  his 
message. 

The  group  within  the  Hall  was  a  sort  of 
school,  in  which  the  inmates  taught  each 
other  all  they  knew.  In  the  long  winter 
evenings,  when  the  men  were  busy  making 
or  mending  weapons,  tools  and  fishing- 
tackle,  and  the  women  were  making  cloth 
and  garments,  every  one  was  expected  to 
contribute  something  to  the  entertainment  of 
the  household.  His  travels  into  outlandish 

39 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

parts,  his  adventures  by  land  or  sea,  the 
tales  he  had  heard  from  Saga-men  or  travel- 
lers, the  songs  he  had  made  or  remembered 
having  heard  from  the  scalds,  the  riddles 
and  jests  his  wit  or  his  memory  supplied  him 
—all  came  not  amiss  to  pass  the  time  pleas- 
antly, and  to  call  forth  discussion  from  wise 
and  unwise.  Thus  was  created  a  common 
level  of  intelligence;  and  a  large  body  of 
knowledge  became  the  property  of  all  who 
slept  under  the  same  roof. 

Even  when  what  was  said  could  not  be 
classed  as  knowledge,  but  only  as  the  prod- 
uct of  invention  or  of  superstition,  such  as 
the  wild  tales  of  pixies,  huldres,  fairies  and 
were-wolves,  it  yet  had  its  use  in  developing 
the  imagination.  The  earth  was  a  stern 
world  in  their  view,  with  dark  corners^  in- 
numerable, from  which  bogles  might  start 
out  at  any  minute.  They  had  not  acquired 
the  assurance  that  it  was  all  their  Father's 

40 


THE  OLD  HALL   (SKALI) 

house,  into  whose  most  secret  places  they 
were  free  to  press  with  question  and  light. 
One  method  of  drawing  out  the  talents  of 
each  of  their  company,  was  to  require  that 
when  the  mead-horn  went  its  rounds,  he  to 
whom  it  came  must  either  sing  a  song,  or  tell 
a  story,  or  propound  a  new  riddle.  In  the 
great  hall  at  Whitby  in  Northumberland, 
where  the  Lady  Hild  presided  as  co-arb 
over  an  ecclesiastical  sept,  according  to  the 
usages  of  the  church  founded  by  St.  Pat- 
rick,8 it  was  the  custom  that  every  one  in 

8 1  translate  the  narrative  of  the  venerable  Baeda  into 
the  language  of  the  earlier  date.  He  makes  Hild  an 
abbess,  and  the  hall  a  monastery,  of  the  Benedictine  type 
to  which  he  was  accustomed.  He  does  not  explain  how 
she  came  to  have  both  men  and  women  under  the  same 
roof,  and  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke  is  driven  to  conjecture 
a  "double  monastery."  Had  he  read  Dr.  John  Henthorn 
Todd's  "Patrick  the  Apostle  of  Ireland"  (Dublin,  1864), 
he  would  have  got  the  right  view. 

Baeda  is  probably  using  the  language  of  a  later  time 
in  making  Caedmon  "  go  out  to  the  byre,"  or  "  go  home  " 
when  the  harp  approached  him.  A  sept  of  the  seventh 
century  would  probably  have  no  other  building  than  its 
Hall.  Caedmon  may  have  gone  out  and  lain  down  for 
warmth  among  the  cattle. 

41 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

turn  should  sing  when  he  "  saw  the  harp 
approaching  him."  One  of  company,  Caed- 
mon,  could  not  sing,  and  rose  and  left  the 
hall  for  the  cattle-byre,  when  he  saw  his  turn 
coming.  There  he  had  the  famous  dream 
in  which  the  command  of  an  angel  awoke 
in  him  the  power  of  verse  and  song,  and 
made  him  the  first  of  English  poets  upon 
English  soil,  for  the  earlier  Beowulf-epic 
must  have  been  composed  on  the  continent 
before  the  invasion  of  Briton  by  the  Angles. 
Latterly,  at  least,  the  inmates  of  the  Hall 
were  not  entirely  dependent  upon  their  own 
gifts  to  make  the  long  nights  pass  easily. 
There  arose,  out  of  the  customs  of  the  Hall 
itself,  a  class  of  saga-men  and  another  of 
scalds  or  minstrels,  who  found  a  welcome  as 
professional  story-tellers  and  poets  with  the 
greater  chiefs  and  their  households.  The 
longer  their  stories,  and  the  larger  the  reper- 
toire of  their  songs,  the  more  welcome  they 

42 


THE  OLD  HALL  (SKALI) 

were,  and  especially  so  if  these  bore  on  the 
achievements  of  the  chief's  ancestors.  Hence 
the  sagas  of  Iceland  and  Norway,  which 
cast  such  a  light  upon  social  usages  and 
popular  beliefs.  Often,  no  doubt,  the  saga- 
man  drew  upon  his  imagination  when  his 
memory  was  at  fault,  and  sometimes  he  and 
the  scalds  rehearsed  the  praises  of  unworthy 
men.  But  there  was  a  limit  to  this,  as 
flattery  that  had  no  basis  in  fact  might  be 
taken  for  sarcasm.  So  in  the  main  we  may 
take  the  saga  as  embodying  the  facts  as 
known.9 

When  the  saga-man  or  the  scald  departed, 
the  sagas  tell  us,  he   did   not   go   empty- 

9  The  general  accuracy  of  the  sagas  is  confirmed  by  the 
correspondence  of  the  Nial-Saga  with  the  Irish  chronicle, 
"The  Wars  of  the  Gaels  with  the  Galls,"  in  their  account 
of  the  great  battle  of  Clontarf  (A.D.  1014).  It  is  note- 
worthy that  the  latter  states  that  it  was  high  tide  at  sun- 
rise on  Good  Friday,  the  day  of  the  battle,  and  that  Prof. 
Houghton  of  Trinity  College  found  this  to  have  been  true, 
by  calculating  the  tides  back  to  that  year. 

43 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

handed.     Rings  of  silver  or  gold  and  gar- 
ments of  fine  wadmal  repaid  his  labors. 

Such  was  the  half-military  life  of  our 
forefathers  in  the  old  Halls  -of  northern 
Europe,  which  they  had  constructed  to  re- 
place the  cave-houses  of  a  still  earlier  date. 
The  transition  from  the  Hall  to  the  modern 
house  was  gradual.  It  seems  to  have  begun 
with  the  erection  of  supplementary  houses 
for  special  purposes,  and  to  have  gone  for- 
ward to  the  separation  of  the  Hall  into 
stories  and  rooms. 


CHAPTER  II 
FROM  HALL  TO  HOUSE 

IN  the  year  of  the  Norman  Conquest  of 
England,  Olaf  Kyrre  ("the  Quiet")  be- 
gan to  reign  over  Norway,  and  he  reigned 
twenty-seven  years.  He  saw  the  subjection 
of  the  Danes  to  the  native  kings  of  Ireland, 
as  well  as  the  establishment  of  a  finer  culture 
in  England  by  its  Norman  rulers  and  church- 
men. It  was  an  era  of  growing  peace,  which 
gave  opportunity  for  social  progress  and 
improvement.  To  this  Olaf's  reign  the 
Norse  traditions  trace  the  beginnings  of  the 
alterations  which  were  to  change  the  char- 
acter of  the  old  Hall. 

The  first  of  these  was  made  in  the  sleep- 
ing arrangements.  With  the  diffusion  of 
Christian  ideas  of  what  is  decent  and  be- 
coming, there  came  a  demand  for  a  privacy 

45 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

which  the  one-roomed  Hall  did  not  afford. 
So  the  space  under  the  eaves,  and  behind 
the  women's  cross-seat  was  separated  from 
the  rest  of  the  Hall  by  a  partition,  and  sub- 
divided into  bed-spaces  for  "  lock-beds." 
These  were  so  named  from  being  shut  by  a 
door,  which  at  night  was  fastened  from 
within  by  a  stout  wooden  bolt,  for  safety. 
In  the  Gisli-saga  its  hero  incurs  outlawry 
for  killing  his  brother-in-law,  while  he  lay 
asleep  in  his  lock-bed.  The  night  was  warm, 
and  the  murderer's  victim  had  left  the  door 
open  for  coolness. 

The  next  step  was  to  separate  the  west 
end  of  the  Hall  from  the  rest  by  a  wall 
parallel  to  the  western  gable,  and  to  divide 
the  space  into  four  small  rooms,  two  above 
and  two  below.  One  of  those  below  became 
the  entry,  and  that  above  it  was  the  berk- 
friet  or  belfry.  At  an  opening  in  its  floor 
in  times  of  peril,  a  sentinel  was  posted,  who 

46 


FROM  HALL  TO  HOUSE 

commanded  the  entry.  The  other  room  be- 
low became  a  store-room  for  dried  fish  and 
the  like,  while  the  second  room  above  was 
made  a  sleeping-place,  and  called  the  "  ram- 
loft  "  or  strong  loft.  One  of  these  still 
exists,  in  which  one  of  the  king  Olafs  slept 
on  his  journey  through  his  realm. 

As  the  life  of  the  household  grew  too  com- 
plex for  such  service  as  a  great  single  room 
could  furnish,  this  need  was  supplied  at  first 
by  erecting  additional  buildings  around  the 
hall.  In  great  establishments,  like  the  Irish 
monastery  at  St.  Gall,  these,  as  old  plans  of 
the  premises  show,  were  numbered  by  the 
score.  We  also  read  in  the  Norse  sagas  of 
guest-houses,  audience-houses,  seething- 
houses  for  cooking,  bath-houses,  and  cot- 
houses  for  thralls  and  poor  dependents. 
Also  of  barns,  kilns,  threshing-houses,  byres, 
stables,  sheep-folds  and  pig-sties.  Some  of 

47 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

these  additional  buildings  deserve  especial 
mention. 

(a)  The  Bower  was  a  strongly  built 
structure  for  the  safe-keeping  of  valuables 
and  household  ornaments.  It  was  raised 
upon  wooden  posts  to  a  good  height  above 
the  ground,  and  between  the  steps  which 
led  up  to  it  and  its  threshold  there  was  space 
for  a  long  stride,  that  the  rats  might  be  kept 
out.  Within  it,  in  wooden  chests,  were 
stored  the  finest  clothes  of  the  household, 
the  embroidered  hangings,  which  adorned 
the  Hall  on  festive  occasions,  and  the  cups, 
bowls  and  rings  of  silver  and  gold,  which 
now  are  to  be  seen  in  the  northern  museums. 
Quite  commonly  the  Bower  became  the 
sleeping-place  of  the  master  and  the  mistress 
of  the  household.  Sometimes  they  gave 
place  to  distinguished  guests,  if  there  were 
no  guest-house  on  the  premises.  Here  also 
the  women  plied  their  tasks  in  day  time,  espe- 

48 


FROM  HALL  TO  HOUSE 

cially  with  the  needle.  And  some  of  the 
bitterest  family  feuds  grew  out  of  what  was 
said  at  such  times  in  the  Bower. 

The  uses  of  the  Bower  are  shown  in  the 
Grettir- Saga.  Grettir  had  been  banished 
from  Iceland  for  man-slaying,  and  made  his 
way  to  Norway.  The  ship  in  which  he  took 
passage  met  with  bad  weather,  and  ran  the 
risk  of  sinking.  At  last,  through  his  power- 
ful efforts  they  reached  an  island  on  the 
coast,  and  were  hospitably  entertained  by 
the  bonder  (farmer)  whose  home  it  was. 
When  the  rest  went  on  to  the  mainland, 
Grettir  stayed  in  the  island.  When  Yule- 
tide  came — somewhat  later  than  our  Christ- 
mas— the  bonder  and  most  of  his  household 
went  off  to  keep  the  festival  with  a  neighbor, 
leaving  on  the  island  his  wife,  a  sick 
daughter,  several  servants  and  Grettir.  One 
day  as  Grettir  was  walking  on  the  shore,  he 
saw  a  ship  approaching.  He  knew  by  the 

A  49 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

shields  at  the  rowers'  seats  that  it  was  a 
pirate  (viking)  vessel;  and  as  the  bonder 
had  been  promient  in  getting  a  law  enacted 
for  the  suppression  of  piracy,  he  presumed 
that  the  visit  was  not  friendly.  He  met  them 
at  the  landing  place,  helped  them  to  secure 
their  ship,  and  congratulated  them  on  their 
coming  in  the  nick  of  time.  The  bonder  was 
away  from  home,  but  his  wife  and  daughter 
were  in  the  hall,  along  with  thralls,  and  there 
was  a  plenty  of  plunder  to  be  had.  As  he 
brought  them  up  to  the  hall,  the  women 
thought  him  to  have  joined  their  enemies, 
and  fled  screaming. 

Grettir  got  the  pirates  into  the  hall,  made 
them  lay  aside  their  weapons  and  their  wet 
garments,  and  warm  themselves  at  the  big 
fire.  Then  he  brought  a  store  of  ale  and 
mead,  and  plied  them  with  it,  while  telling 
them  what  fine  things  they  would  find  in  the 

50 


FROM  HALL  TO  HOUSE 

Bower.  At  last  they  got  up  to  go  and 
examine  its  treasures,  and  Grettir  went  with 
them.  He  waited  for  the  favored  moment  to 
slip  out  and  bolt  the  door,  and  to  run  to  the 
Hall  for  his  sword.  He  called  upon  the 
male  thralls  to  come  and  help  him,  which  one 
of  them  did.  By  the  time  the  pirates  had 
forced  open  the  door,  Grettir  was  ready  for 
them.  He  and  the  thrall  killed  all  but  two, 
who  escaped  for  the  time  but  were  frozen 
to  death  before  morning.  When  he  returned 
to  the  Hall  the  bonder's  wife  gave  him  a 
bright  welcome,  and  made  him  sit  on  the 
lower  high  seat,  across  the  Hall  from  that 
which  her  husband  occupied. 

In  later  times,  when  the  family  was  small, 
the  Bower  seems  in  some  cases  to  have  be- 
come the  real  home,  displacing  the  Hall, 
which  was  kept  for  other  uses.  The  poor 
widow  of  Chaucer's  "  Nun  Priest's  Tale  " 

51 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

had  both  Hall  and  Bower,  but  she  and  her 
two  daughters  dwelt  in  the  Bower,  while 
her  "  cock,  hight  Chanticleer," 

among  his  wives  alle 
Sat  on  his  perch,  that  was  in  the  halle. 

(fc)  The  seething-house  or  kitchen  must 
have  been  devised  for  the  comfort  of  wealthy 
householders,  who  thought  they  would  enjoy 
their  dinner  the  better  for  not  having  it 
cooked  under  their  noses.  It  was  ranked 
with  the  Hall  as  a  "  fire-house,"  and  an  old 
Icelandic  law  provides  that  if  there  be  both 
a  hall  and  a  seething-house,  the  householder 
must  declare  for  which  of  the  two  the  com- 
munity shall  be  responsible  in  case  it  were 
burnt  down.  This  shows  the  existence  of 
a  system  of  communal  fire-insurance  at  a 
much  earlier  date  than  we  should  have  sup- 
posed. Life-insurance  on  the  contrary 
hardly  could  have  been  a  profitable  business 


FROM  HALL  TO  HOUSE 

at  that  time,  when  manslaying  was  so  much 
more  common  than  arson. 

(c)  In  the  later  sagas  we  hear  of  an  earth- 
house  for  concealment,  in  case  the  hall  were 
ransacked  by  its  owner's  enemies.     It  was 
in  one  instance  constructed  behind  his  bed. 
It  commonly  afforded  an  outlet  for  escape 
through    an    underground    passage,    either 
into  one  of  the  outhouses,  or  to  some  spot  in 
the  neighborhood*  where  its  mouth  was  con- 
cealed among  bushes,  or  something  of  the 
sort.     Sometimes,  however,  the  entrance  to 
this    passage    was    known    to    the    chief's 
enemies,  and  was  used  to  enter  the  house 
suddenly  and  unexpected.1 

(d)  Some  of  the  Icelandic  chiefs  had  a 

1  In  colonial  America  passages  like  this  were  constructed 
as  a  means  of  escape  from  Indian  enemies.  Tradition 
assigns  this  as  the  purpose  of  the  underground  passage 
from  the  Logan  house  at  Stenton  to  the  burial-place  of  the 
family.  But  at  no  time  could  an  attack  from  the  Indians 
have  been  anticipated  at  a  point  so  near  Philadelphia  as 
Stenton  is. 

53 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

bath-house,  and  when  the  hot- springs  were 
sufficiently  near,  hot  water  was  conveyed 
thither  in  skilfully  constructed  pipes  or 
channels.  This  supplied  the  means  to  a  bath 
of  the  type  now  called  Turkish,  but  once 
general  throughout  northern  Europe. 

The  subdivision  of  the  Hall  into  stories 
and  rooms  was  impossible  so  long  as  the 
open  hearth-fire  required  space  for  the 
smoke  to  rise.  But  in  Olaf  Kyrre's  reign  a 
change  was  made  in  many  halls  which  fore- 
casted modern  arrangements  for  heating. 
The  hearth-fire  was  pleasant,  but  costly,  as 
it  was  wasteful  of  fuel.  It  burnt  the  forests 
off  Iceland.  Ships  were  built  of  native 
timber  in  the  early  days  of  the  Norse  settle- 
ment, although  the  importation  of  timber 
from  the  mother  country  began  early  and 
was  extensive.  To-day  there  is  hardly  a 
tree  of  a  respectable  size  in  the  island,  and 
the  soil  has  been  injured  by  the  denudation 

54 


FROM  HALL  TO  HOUSE 

of  the  country  of  its  trees.  So  the  Icelanders 
had  to  burn  turf,  which  the  Scandinavians, 
unlike  the  Celts,  disliked  for  its  strongly 
pungent  odor.  In  the  Orkneys  they  must 
have  done  so  from  the  first.  It  is  one  of 
several  proofs  that  the  Poetic  Edda,  al- 
though first  found  in  Iceland  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  was  not  composed  in  that  island  but 
in  the  Orkneys,  that  turf  is  mentioned  as  the 
usual  fuel. 

In  the  two  Scandinavian  peninsulas  the 
havoc  of  the  forests  was  not  so  great,  yet 
serious,  especially  in  the  vicinity  of  the  towns 
and  cities,  for  to  bring  fuel  from  a  distance 
was  not  so  easy  as  it  now  is. 

To  save  fuel  in  heating  the  Halls,  there 
was  devised  a  structure  of  masonry,  with 
space  for  a  fire  inside,  and  at  the  top  an 
escape  for  flame  and  smoke  directly  into  the 
Hall.  Into  this  the  fuel  was  introduced 
every  morning,  and  a  brisk  fire  secured  to 

55 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

warm  the  whole  structure,  which  then  radi- 
ated out  heat  all  day.  This  was  the  ancestor 
of  the  earthenware  stove  (or  Kakel-ofn)  of 
the  Scandinavian  countries,  Germany  and 
Russia,  from  which  travellers,  especially 
Americans,  derive  little  comfort.  It  seems 
not  unlikely  that  it  was  copied  from  Russia. 
Two  changes  resulted  from  this  new  de- 
vice. The  first  was  the  use  of  lamps  to  light 
the  Hall.  As  the  light  of  the  hearth-fire  was 
no  longer  available  for  this,  bowls  of  fish-oil, 
with  vegetable  wicks  afloat  in  them  and 
burning,  came  into  use.  This  probably  fur- 
nished more  smell  than  illumination.  But 
the  world  had  long  to  wait  for  a  satisfactory 
lamp.  It  was  in  the  eighteenth  century  that 
a  Frenchman,  in  experimenting  with  a  glass 
tube  held  over  a  lamp-flame,  found  he  could 
regulate  the  supply  of  air  so  as  to  obtain 
a  smokeless  flame,  or  to  reduce  the  small 
amount  to  a  negligible  quantity. 

56f 


FROM  HALL  TO  HOUSE. 

To  make  the  fire  in  the  stove  burn 
brightly,  it  commonly  was  placed  at  the  west 
end  of  the  Hall,  where  the  door  would  fur- 
nish the  required  amount  of  draft.  So  the 
middle  of  the  long  seat  was  no  longer  the 
place  of  greatest  comfort;  and  the  master 
of  the  house  shifted  his  seat  from  that  to 
the  end  of  the  long  table.  King  Olaf  Kyrre, 
we  are  told,  did  so;  but  kings  and  nobles 
generally  retained  the  open  hearth-fire,  and 
kept  the  middle  of  the  long  seat,  while  the 
less  wealthy  householders  followed  the  ex- 
ample set  by  that  king.  For  this  reason  the 
heads  of  royal  and  noble  houses  in  Europe 
to  this  day  sit  at  the  middle,  and  not  at  the 
end,  of  the  table,  while  the  heads  of  less 
distinguished  families  sit  at  the  table-head. 
Queen  Victoria,  for  instance,  never  sat  at 
the  end  of  a  table.2  Yet  in  common  parlance 

2 1  am  told  that  the  early  settlers  of  New  England  were 
divided  in  practice  in  this  usage,  many  of  them  keeping 
the  middle  of  the  dining-table  for  the  father  of  the  family. 

57 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

"  the  head  of  the  table  "  has  come  to  be  re- 
garded as  the  place  of  honor.  "  Where  the 
MacGregor  sits  is  the  head  of  the  table,"  was 
the  proud  boast  of  the  chief  of  the  Gregara. 

But  the  great  change  came  with  the  inven- 
tion of  the  chimney  in  the  twelfth  century, 
and  in  Normandy. 

It  is  hard  to  realize  that  the  chimney  was 
unknown  to  the  ancients,  whether  of  the 
East,  or  of  Greece  and  the  Roman  empire. 
Our  English  Bible,  indeed,  in  both  the 
Authorized  and  the  Revised  version  of 
1884,  makes  the  prophet  Hosea  (xiii,  3) 
speak  of  "  smoke  out  of  a  chimney."  The 
Hebrew  word  here  translated  "  chimney  " 
means  an  open  grating,  possibly  in  the  roof, 
for  the  escape  of  smoke  and  the  admission 
of  light.  The  Hebrews  and  the  Greeks  had 
no  chimneys.  The  most  that  Roman  luxury 
could  achieve  was  to  heat  air  in  one  room, 

58 


FROM  HALL  TO  HOUSE 

and  convey  it  by  pipes  into  another.  The 
great  architect  Vitruvius,  contemporary 
with  Cicero  and  Caesar,  warns  his  readers 
never  to  place  fine  wood-carvings  in  a  room 
where  there  is  a  fire,  as  the  smoke  will  cer- 
tainly ruin  them. 

It  hardly  can  be  said  even  now  that  the 
chimney  has  achieved  the  conquest  of 
southern  Europe.  A  photograph  showing 
the  sky-line  of  any  Mediterranean  city,  will 
be  found  to  contrast  sharply  with  one  of  any 
city  of  the  North.  In  the  contour  of  the 
former  the  chimney  is  not  nearly  so  promi- 
nent as  in  the  latter.  An  American  boy 
born  in  Honolulu  surprised  his  classmates  by 
omitting  chimneys  in  the  pictures  of  houses 
he  drew  on  his  slate,  until  he  told  them  that 
"  in  Hawaii  houses  have  no  chimbleys  on." 
In  Japan  the  popular  substitute  for  a  chim- 
ney is  an  opening  in  the  gable-wall  of  the 
house. 

59 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

Americans  have  learned  by  experience 
not  to  spend  a  winter  in  southern  Europe, 
if  they  can  choose  between  that  and  the 
north.  Better  Stockholm  or  Berlin  than 
Madrid  or  Rome,  for  comfort  in  the  months 
of  frost  and  chill.  The  Italian  offers  you  a 
brazier  of  burning  charcoal,  at  which  you 
may  warm  your  fingers.  In  Madrid  the 
brazier  is  mounted  on  wheels,  and  taken 
from  room  to  room,  to  take  the  chill  off;  but 
to  get  even  moderately  warm  you  must  wrap 
yourself  up  and  march  up  and  down  the 
Plaza  del  Sol  until  your  blood  circulates. 
Not  only  is  the  city  built  on  a  hill,  which  ex- 
poses it  to  all  weathers,  but  fuel  is  exces- 
sively dear,  the  prunings  of  the  vines  some- 
times selling  for  as  much  as  do  the  grapes. 
Mr.  Hannibal  Hamlin,  who  was  vice-presi- 
dent when  Mr.  Lincoln  was  president,  was 
sent  to  Madrid  as  American  minister  by 

60 


FROM  HALL  TO  HOUSE 

President  Grant.  He  belonged  to  the  State 
of  Maine,  which  is  not  considered  a  warm 
part  of  the  republic,  where  indeed  a  fire  is 
generally  welcome  as  August  draws  to  a 
close.  It  was  Mr.  Hamlin's  boast  that  he 
never  had  worn  an  overcoat.  One  winter  in 
Madrid  satisfied  him  that  he  either  must  put 
on  an  overcoat  or  come  home.  He  resigned 
the  embassy  and  came  back  to  Maine. 

The  chimney,  as  I  have  said,  first  made 
its  appearance  in  Normandy  in  the  twelfth 
century.  Its  own  name,  the  name  given  to 
its  hearth  in  many  languages  of  continental 
Europe  (poesil),  and  the  name  of  the  pro- 
jecting wall  which  protects  it  from  an  ex- 
cessive draft  (jamb)  are  Norman  words. 
The  oldest  existing  chimneys  are  found  in 
Normandy.  Through  the  international 
organization  of  the  building  trade  of  that 
time,  it  spread  rapidly  over  the  north  of 

61 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

Europe,  and  was  adopted  by  the  wealthier 
house-holders.3 

The  coming  of  the  chimney  transformed 
the  Hall.  As  the  smoke  now  passed  directly 
and  entirely  into  the  open  air,  the  space  for 
it  overhead  was  no  longer  needed.  First, 
part  of  this  was  brought  into  use  by  an 
upper  floor,  which  gave  a  loft  extending 
over  half  the  Hall.  Presently  the  loft 
reached  over  the  other  half  also,  and  the 

3  The  cot-dwellers  continued  to  use  the  hole  in  the  roof 
until  quite  recent  times.  Jeremy  Taylor  praises  "the  poor 
herdsman  that  dwells  upon  his  own  acre,  and  looks  not 
ambitiously  on  his  neighbor's  farm,  nor  covets  the  next 
cottage,  which  yet  he  likes  well,  and  thinks  it  excellent, 
because  it  hath  a  chimney."  The  farmers  also  in  some 
places  kept  up  the  old  fashion.  The  authors  of  "The 
Vale  Royall  of  England,  or  The  County  Palatine  of 
Chester"  (1656)  say  that  "in  the  building  and  furniture 
of  their  houses,  till  of  late  years,  they  used  the  old  manner 
of  the  Saxons;  for  they  had  their  fire  in  the  midst  of  the 
house,  against  a  hob  of  clay;  but  within  these  forty  years 
they  have  builded  chimneys."  Robert  Southey,  quoting 
this  in  180T,  adds,  that  "the  last  farm-house  of  this  de- 
scription was  remaining  in  the  township  of  Tong-with- 
Hough,  near  Bolton,  in  Lancashire,  within  the  last 
twenty  years." 

62 


FROM  HALL  TO  HOUSE 

house  had  a  second  story,  which  was  reached 
by  a  staircase  outside  the  building.  Then 
the  long,  low  side- walls  were  raised  much 
higher  and  pierced  with  windows.  These  at 
first  were  mere  openings  in  the  wall,  and 
were  closed  in  bad  weather  by  a  shutter. 
Glass  was  too  costly  for  any  but  the  very 
rich.4  It  had  come  into  use  for  the  churches 
in  the  seventh  and  eighth  centuries.  But  as 
late  as  the  sixteenth  century,  when  the 
nobles  left  their  country  homes  to  go  up  to 
London,  they  had  their  glass  windows 
packed  away  until  their  return.  No  hand- 
somer present  could  be  made  to  a  bride  at 
her  wedding  than  a  whole  sash  of  glass, 
which  would  enable  her  to  have  daylight  in 
her  bed-room  in  all  kinds  of  weather. 
Along  with  the  separation  of  the  Hall 

4  This  seems  to  explain  the  venerable  practice  of  break- 
ing a  man's  windows  by  way  of  showing  your  dislike  of 
him.  It  was  a  serious  business  when  glass  was  scarce  and 
dear. 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

into  stories  by  floors,  came  the  subdivision 
of  those  stories  by  partition  walls,  and  the 
breaking  up  of  the  furniture  into  smaller 
pieces.  The  long  seat  was  moved  out  from 
under  the  eaves,  and  resolved  itself  into 
chests,  chairs,  settees,  and  much  else.  The 
lock-bed  now  took  whatever  place  in  the 
room  was  thought  desirable,  instead  of  being 
fastened,  as  one  of  a  series,  to  the  wall.  It 
was  still  a  structure  of  wood,  and  fully 
boxed  in ;  and  at  night  it  was  shut  by  a  door 
which  was  bolted.  It  stood  so  high  that 
steps  were  needed  to  climb  up  to  it;  and  it 
commonly  was  so  large  as  to  admit  of  a 
number  of  occupants.  The  younger  children 
usually  slept  there  with  their  parents;  and 
as  these  did  not  always  come  to  bed  sober, 
many  a  poor  child  lost  its  life  by  being 
"  overlaid."  It  was  therefore  a  distinct  gain 
when  the  trundle-bed  was  devised  for  the 
children,  and  took  its  name  from  its  being 

64 


FROM  HALL  TO  HOUSE 

trundled  under  their  parents'  bed  in  the  day 
time. 

In  much  later  times  the  big  box-bed  was 
replaced  by  something  less  clumsy,  but  this 
was  hung  with  curtains  and  valances  to  keep 
off  drafts.  Even  then  no  one  dared  to  go 
to  bed  without  a  night-cap,  lest  he  should 
"  get  his  death  of  cold."  It  was  over  those 
bed-hangings  that  our  grandmothers  did 
battle  with  the  doctors  of  their  time,  who 
told  them  it  would  be  more  wholesome  to 
sleep  in  a  bed  open  to  fresh  air. 

The  old  ladies,  however,  had  much  to  say 
for  themselves.  Those  old  houses  were  ex- 
ceedingly drafty  through  their  defects  of 
construction.  The  modern  niceties  of  meas- 
urement, the  use  of  the  spirit-level,  and 
the  close  fitting  of  woodwork,  were  un- 
known. Floors  were  rarely  free  from  slopes 
and  cracks;  doors  and  sashes  did  not  fit. 
When  the  builder  conjectured  that  it  was 

5  65 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

time  to  put  on  another  floor,  he  trusted  to 
his  eye  and  went  ahead,  without  bothering 
about  exact  measurements  and  levellings. 
Even  in  the  eighteenth  century  this  was  the 
case.  I  have  lived  in  a  house  which  dated 
from  before  1750,  and  I  found  that  the 
corners  of  my  library  differed  by  three  or 
four  inches  in  height ;  while  I  could  have  put 
my  hand  under  any  door  of  the  house  when 
it  was  shut. 

Literature  reflects  the  passionate  welcome 
with  which  our  forefathers  greeted  the  re- 
turn of  Spring.  The  oldest  English  song, 
of  which  we  have  the  music,  begins  with  the 
joyful  statement: 

Sommer  is  y-comen. 

Chaucer  begins  the  Prologue  to  the  Canter- 
bury Tales  with  a  picture  which  shows  how 
keenly  the  return  of  warmth  was  felt: 


FROM  HALL  TO  HOUSE 

Whan  that  Aprile,  with  his  schowres  swoote, 
The  drought  of  March  hath  perced  to  the  roote. 
And  bathed  every  veyne  in  swich  licour, 
Of  which  vertue  engendred  is  the  flour; 
Whan  Zephirus  eek  with  his  swete  breethe 
Enspired  hath  in  every  holte  and  heethe 
The  tender  croppes,  and  the  yonge  sonne 
Hath  in  the  Ram,  his  halfe  cours  i-ronne, 
And  smalle  fowles  maken  melodic, 
That  sleepen  al  the  night  with  open  eye, 
So  pricketh  hem  nature  in  here  corages : — 
Thanne  longen  folk  to  gon  on  pilgrimages. 

It  is  a  far  call  from  Chaucer  (1387)  to 
James  Thomson  (1726),  but  in  that  year 
the  Scotch  poet  published  his  "  Winter," 
which  he  had  written  in  bed,  with  his  arm 
through  a  hole  in  the  blanket,  trying  to  keep 
warm.  The  practice  of  writing  "  Spring 
poetry,"  which  persists  especially  in 
America,  is  a  survival  of  the  earlier  attitude 
toward  the  time  of  year  when  men  escaped 
the  harsh  severity  of  winter's  frost,  as  they 
felt  it  in  damp  and  drafty  houses.  "  How 

6T 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

did  you  keep  warm  in  that  old  house  in 
winter? "  was  asked  of  a  venerable  lady  of 
Philadelphia.  "  My  dears,"  she  answered, 
"  I  never  was  warm  in  winter  until  I  was 
sixty  years  old." 

A  still  greater  change  was  going  on  in 
society  at  large,  and  was  assisting  and  even 
hastening  the  transformation  of  the  Hall 
into  the  House.  This  was  the  cessation  of 
private  warfare.  Governments  were  grow- 
ing strong  enough  to  exercise  a  sort  of  police 
for  the  prevention  of  crimes  of  violence,  and 
thus  were  making  it  unnecessary  to  garrison 
the  house,  and  to  live  under  arms  in  a  place 
of  strength.  So  the  half -military  group  of 
the  Tiird  or  Menie  5  began  to  break  up,  and 

5  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  this  fine  old  word  survives 
only  in  the  term  "  menial,"  which  once  was  honorable 
enough,  but  now  emphasizes  the  subordinate  and  commer- 
cial character  of  the  servant  and  his  services,  and  in 
"minion"  (F.  mignon)  which  is  equally  contemptuous. 
Such,  however,  has  been  the  fate  of  many  good  words — 
caitif,  boor,  etc. 


FROM  HALL  TO  HOUSE 

the  natural  family  emerged  to  take  its  place. 
The  inmates  of  the  house  were  greatly  re- 
duced in  number,  and  the  distance  between 
them  and  the  family  proper  was  greatly 
widened.  From  retainers  they  became 
hired  servants  merely,  kept  on  wages  and 
liable  to  dismissal.  The  household  school, 
in  which  greatest  and  least  acquired  the 
same  elements  of  knowledge,  and  the  same 
acquaintance  with  traditional  and  oral  litera- 
ture, was  broken  up.  Education  became  the 
privilege  of  the  few  who  could  pay  for  in- 
struction, while  the  rest  clung  to  the  frag- 
ments of  the  old  and  popular  culture  of  the 
Hall,  which  survived  in  ballads  and  folk- 
tales. The  common  workshop  was  replaced 
by  the  shops  of  the  town's  people ;  but  here 
also  there  was  a  loss  of  that  goodfellowship 
between  master  and  men,  which  belonged  to 
the  familiar  relations  of  the  earlier  time. 
Something  of  the  old  character  clung  to 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

the  "  menials  "  after  the  change,  especially 
in  Scotland,  where  mediaeval  usage  still  pre- 
vailed. Dean  Ramsay  illustrates  this  in  his 
delightful  "  Reminiscences  of  Scottish  Life 
and  Character  "  (1858),  in  the  chapter  "  On 
the  Old  Scottish  Domestic  Servant."  The 
Dean  fails  to  trace  the  peculiarity  of  the  old- 
fashioned  servant  to  its  historic  source,  but 
he  illustrates  it  very  amply.  One  laird,  in 
his  wrath,  ordered  his  man  to  leave  the 
place,  and  was  answered,  "  Na,  na,  I'm  no 
gangin'.  If  ye  dinna  ken  whan  ye've  a  gude 
servant,  I  ken  whan  I've  a  gude  place." 
Their  care  of  the  family  interests  was  often 
embarrassing.  At  a  dinner-party,  the 
hostess  said  to  her  butler,  "  Thomas,  Mrs. 
Murray  has  not  a  salt-spoon."  As  Thomas 
paid  no  attention,  she  repeated  her  words 
in  a  peremptory  tone.  "  Last  time  Mrs. 
Murray  was  here,  we  lost  a  salt-spoon,"  was 
the  reply. 

70 


FROM  HALL  TO  HOUSE 

Those  old  servants  were  very  exacting, 
expecting  to  be  consulted  in  all  serious 
crises  of  the  family  life,  and  resenting  every 
slight.  This  was  especially  true  where  they 
were  attached  to  their  masters  by  a  sort  of 
hereditary  tie,  one  generation  after  another 
entering  the  service.  They  spoke  to  the  head 
of  the  house  almost  as  equals,  and  over  the 
children  they  exercised  sharp  authority. 
Those  who  speak  with  regret  of  the  disap- 
pearance of  this  class  of  menials,  are  aware 
only  of  one  side  of  its  relations  with  the 
home.  Its  loyalty  they  admire;  its  arro- 
gance they  would  not  endure. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  TOWN-HOUSE 

THE  town-house  is  much  the  junior  of  the 
rural  "  hall."  Our  Celtic,  German  and 
Scandinavian  forefathers  did  not  love  towns, 
or  town-life.  As  the  Douglas  said  of  him- 
self, they  "  would  rather  hear  the  lark  sing, 
than  the  mouse  cheep."  Tacitus  notes  that 
the  Germans,  even  while  they  lived  in  thorps 
(dorfs),  for  safety  or  convenience,  yet  built 
their  houses  well  apart  from  each  other. 
When  they  overran  the  Roman  Empire  in 
the  fifth  century,  they  did  not  make  their 
homes  in  the  cities  which  composed  it.  Some 
of  them  they  wiped  out,  but  they  left  others 
in  the  hands  of  their  new  subjects,  under  the 
operation  of  Roman  law  and  its  municipal 
rule,  while  they  imposed  upon  them  the  pay- 
ment of  tribute  and  the  duty  of  coining 
money. 

The  rise  of  towns  in  Europe  grew  out  of 

72 


THE  TOWN-HOUSE 

a  new  division  of  labor,  in  which  men  ceased 
to  produce  in  a  clumsy  way  on  their  farms 
all  they  needed,  and  began  to  leave  this  or 
that  trade  to  persons  expert  in  it.  Then  it 
was  found  convenient  to  have  these  trades- 
people gather  into  towns,  where  others 
would  be  sure  to  find  workmen  of  the  kind 
they  wanted,  when  they  had  a  purchase  to 
make. 

Hardly  any  people  lived  in  the  towns  ex- 
cept trades-people,  unless  it  were  the 
courtiers  at  the  king's  residence,  or  the 
attendants  on  the  courts  of  law.  Even  these 
hurried  off  to  their  homes  in  the  country  as 
soon  as  they  had  opportunity,  and  thus 
escaped  the  risk  of  pestilence.  Washington 
Irving  notes  this  as  still  the  habit  of  the  resi- 
dents of  London  in  his  time;  and  since  that 
the  growth  of  wealth  has  made  it  as  common 
in  America  as  in  England. 

If  we  entered  one  of  those  early  towns, 
with  the  purpose — let  us  say — to  buy  a 

73 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

saddle,  we  did  not  look  for  street-names  on 
the  corners.  The  towns-people,  knowing 
that  we  probably  could  not  read,  did  not 
insult  us  by  reminding  us  of  our  ignorance. 
For  the  same  reason  they  put  no  names  on 
signs.  But  each  trade  had  its  own  symbol, 
which  every  one  recognized.  The  vintner 
displayed  a  bush.  Hence  the  saying  in 
Shakespeare,  "  Good  wine  needs  no  bush." 
The  doctor  hung  out  three  gilded  pills;  and 
when  the  Medici  passed  from  that  profes- 
sion to  the  loan  business,  they  took  the  pills 
with  them,  and  there  they  stay.  The  barber- 
surgeon,  who  combined  the  trimming  of 
beards  and  hair  with  the  letting  of  blood, 
displayed  a  white  arm  with  streaks  of  red 
on  it ;  and  thus  originated  our  barber's  pole. 
The  harness-maker  naturally  exhibited  a 
horse's  head ;  and  it  is  for  this  we  are  looking. 
As  we  pass  up  the  town  on  this  search,  we 
keep  to  the  middle  of  the  street.  Side-walks 

74 


THE  TOWN-HOUSE 

there  are  none,  but  down  the  middle  runs  a 
series  of  broad,  flat  stones,  called  in  continen- 
tal countries  "  the  Burgomaster's  Stone,"  be- 
cause if  His  Honor  the  mayor  came  down  it, 
we  should  have  to  step  off  to  give  him  room. 
And  this  stepping  off  was  a  serious  business. 
From  the  middle  of  the  street  to  the  houses 
on  both  sides  lay  a  vast  collection  of  filth, 
ripening  for  transportation  to  the  farms 
when  spring  opened.  In  this  the  pigs 
wallowed  when  driven  in  from  the  beech  or 
oak  woods  by  the  hog-reeve  at  the  close  of 
day.  Into  this  was  thrown  all  the  refuse  and 
filth  of  the  house.1 

1  Until  toward  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century  the 
streets  of  Glasgow  were  lined  with  such  middens,  as  were 
those  of  Scotch  towns  generally.  John  Gait,  in  his 
"Annals  of  the  Parish"  (1821),  has  a  vivid  picture  of  the 
streets  of  a  Scotch  town,  and  of  mishaps  which  befell 
travellers  in  driving  through*  it.  The  filth  of  Edinburgh 
was  proverbial,  as  refuse  of  all  sorts  was  flung  into  the 
streets  from  every  story  of  the  lofty  houses  in  the  Old 
Town,  with  the  warning  "  Gardy  loo "  (Guardez  de  I'EaM) 
to  the  passers-by.  My  mother  told  me  that  when  she 
visited  Belfast  in  her  girlhood,  she  found  the  town  in- 
tolerable for  its  bad  smells,  and  was  delighted  to  get  away 
from  it  to  her  home  on  the  shores  of  Lough  Neagh. 

75 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

When  we  see  the  sign  of  a  harness-maker, 
we  pick  our  steps  across  the  midden  to  his 
shop,  aided  probably  by  stepping-stones  he 
has  placed  for  the  convenience  of  his  cus- 
tomers. We  find  that  the  town-house  stands 
with  its  gable-end  to  the  street,  as  the  Dutch 
houses  still  do,  and  also  the  older  houses  in 
American  towns  built  by  the  Dutch  colonists 
( Schenectady,  Albany  and  others).  It  was 
built  of  the  same  materials  as  the  country- 
house,  except  that  the  roof  was  of  thatch, 
not  of  sod.  It  was  at  first  one  large  hall, 
lighted  by  a  hearth-fire,  and  not  divided  into 
stories  or  rooms.  These  came  afterward,  in 
due  time.  The  entrance  was  easier  of  access, 
as  there  was  no  such  need  of  defence.  Its 
peril  was  in  the  roof.  As  the  thatch  grew 
very  dry  in  the  sun,  especially  during  a  long 
drought,  it  was  liable  to  catch  fire.  If  the 
women  would  not  keep  the  fire  in  all  night, 
and  went  out  in  the  morning  to  borrow  a 

76 


THE  TOWN-HOUSE 

bowl  of  embers  (creish)  from  a  neighbor, 
and  there  was  enough  wind  to  blow  the 
sparks  about,  a  conflagration  followed.  The 
towns  of  the  north  of  Europe  were  burnt 
down  about  once  in  sixty  years.  This  is  why 
those  who  look  for  very  old  houses,  must  seek 
them  in  the  country  rather  than  in  the  towns. 
To  check  this  fire  loss  the  substitution  of 
slates  or  tiles  for  thatch  was  enacted  by  law, 
but  hardly  enforced.  People  preferred  the 
risk  to  the  expense. 

When  we  enter  our  saddler's  house,  we 
find  it  a  sort  of  double  workshop.  The  big 
room  is  divided  between  the  men  and  the 
women.  On  one  side  the  master  with  his 
journeymen  and  apprentices  is  busy  with 
the  making  of  harness  and  saddles.  On  the 
other  the  women  of  the  family  are  spinning 
and  weaving  wool  or  flax,  cutting  and  sew- 
ing garments,  making  candles,  dressing  and 
cooking  food,  etc. 

77 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

To  the  master  we  state  what  we  want,  but 
are  met  by  the  disclaimer  that  he  does  indeed 
make  saddles,  but  not  for  persons  in  our 
class.  We  really  must  go  elsewhere  for  what 
we  need.  As  we  know  what  this  means,  we 
insist  on  being  shown  what  he  has  in  stock. 
He  turns  up  a  part  of  the  long-seat,  and 
brings  from  the  chest  thus  opened  one  saddle 
after  another,  showing  them  with  evident 
pride  in  his  handiwork.  At  last  we  see  one 
we  think  will  suit  our  need,  and  our  purse. 
Then  the  chaffering  begins,  to  last  an  hour 
or  two.  He  asks  about  seven  times  as  much 
as  he  means  to  take,  and  we  offer  about  a 
seventh  of  what  we  mean  to  give.  In  a 
highly  dramatic  colloquy,  in  which  we  start 
several  times  to  go  elsewhere,  and  he  as  often 
to  put  the  saddle  back  into  the  chest,  we 
work  toward  an  agreement.  At  the  end  we 
declare  we  are  swindled,  and  he  that  he  is 

78 


THE  TOWN-HOUSE 

ruined,  and  we  part  well  pleased  with  the 
transaction.2 

With  the  introduction  of  the  chimney,  the 
town-house  was  transformed  even  more 
rapidly  than  that  of  the  country.  In  Eng- 
land of  the  fifteenth  century  the  chimney 
was  of  obligation.  When  a  new  member  was 
admitted  into  one  of  the  guilds,  it  was  re- 
quired that  he  should  build  him  a  house  and  a 
chimney,  and  keep  both  in  good  repair.  In 
the  town  the  division  of  the  house  into 
stories,  which  the  chimney  made  possible,  was 
welcome  as  an  addition  practically  to  the 
area  of  the  town  in  its  densely  peopled  space. 
Some  audacity  was  shown  in  extending  the 

2  It  was  in  this  way  that  the  chaffering  of  buyer  and 
seller  was  carried  on  all  over  Europe,  somewhat  as  in  the 
bazars  of  Asia  to  this  day.  In  England  and  America  it 
was  put  down  by  the  Discipline  of  the  Society  of  Friends, 
which  required  Quaker  tradesmen  to  adhere  to  the  rule, 
"  One  Price,  and  no  Abatement."  Whoever  had  to  make 
a  purchase  in  haste,  and  had  not  time  or  taste  for  chaffer- 
ing, looked  for  a  Quaker  in  that  line  of  trade,  and  bought 
what  he  wanted  in  a  few  minutes.  Then  the  rival  shop- 
keepers had  to  abide  by  the  same  rule. 

79 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

higher  stories  over  the  street,  so  that  even 
when  this  was  wide  enough  at  the  ground,  it 
was  possible  to  shake  hands  across  it  at  the 
top.  One  of  the  old  houses  in  York  en- 
croaches on  the  street  in  this  way  by  fifteen 
feet.  This  helped  the  mass  of  filth  to  keep 
the  town  unhealthy,  by  checking  the  circula- 
tion of  the  air.3 

To  one  European  country  belongs  the 
honor  of  anticipating  the  modern  standard 
of  cleanliness.  No  kitchen-middens  reeked 
in  the  streets  of  the  Dutch  towns,  and  no 
pigs  wallowed  there.  Within  Dutch  houses 
cleanliness  was  carried  to  a  high  point. 
Tradition  tells  of  one  Dutch  Mefrow,  who 

3  The  streets  were  narrow  enough,  as  also  in  ancient 
times.  Rome  herself  had  but  one  street  of  respectable 
width,  the  Via  Sacra,  along  which  religious  processions 
had  to  pass,  especially  the  triumphs  and  ovations  of  the 
Roman  generals,  on  their  way  to  sacrifice  ox  or  sheep  in 
the  temple  of  Jupiter  on  the  Capitoline  mount.  Sir  Thomas 
More,  in  his  "Utopia"  (1516),  praises  the  people  of  that 
ideal  state  for  having  no  street  of  less  than  sixty  feet  in 
width. 

80 


THE  TOWN-HOUSE 

scrubbed  through  the  floor  and  fell  into  the 
cellar;  but  this  is  not  authenticated  by  con- 
temporary evidence.  We  have  seen  what 
Erasmus  of  Rotterdam  wrote  of  the  filth  of 
the  English  Halls,  with  their  stale  rushes 
and  dogs'  refuse  on  the  floors.  Mr.  Charles 
Reade  takes  the  father  of  Erasmus  as  the 
hero  of  his  story,  "  The  Cloister  and  the 
Hearth  "  ( 1861 ) ,  and  makes  him  turn  up  his 
nose  at  the  foulness  of  the  inns  of  Germany 
and  France. 

Wherever  the  Dutch  went  they  took  with 
them  their  passion  for  cleanliness.  In  the 
sixteenth  century  a  Dutch  woman,  Mefrow 
Sigrit,  acquired  great  influence  over  King 
Christian  II  of  Denmark,  and  used  this  to 
get  the  streets  of  the  Danish  cities  paved  and 
kept  clean.  Later  in  that  century  one  of 
those  towns  was  expecting  a  visit  from  a 
personage  of  the  royal  family,  when  Jt 
occurred  to  the  city  fathers  that  if  his  royal 

fi  81 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

highness  "  had  a  nose  on  his  face,"  he  would 
not  relish  the  streets  of  their  town.  So  they 
enlisted  the  services  of  all  the  carts  and 
wagons  in  the  town  to  bring  up  sand  from 
the  seashore,  and  they  spread  this  over  the 
filth  to  the  depth  of  several  inches,  which 
would  serve  to  mask  it  so  long  as  his  visit 
lasted. 

Not  that  Denmark  was  a  whit  worse  than 
other  countries  than  Holland.  Koeln 
(Cologne)  was  proverbial  for  its  foulness 
and  its  bad  smells  even  in  the  eighteenth 
century. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  LATER  TOWN-HOUSE 

THE  towns  of  northern  Europe  had  made 
their  beginnings  in  a  despised  poverty,  but 
during  the  Middle  Ages  they  had  advanced 
fast  in  wealth  and  importance.  Their  sup- 
port of  the  kings  against  the  local  authority 
of  the  nobles  had  enabled  monarchy  to  dis- 
place the  feudal  aristocracy  in  the  actual 
control  of  the  peoples,  and  thus  to  shift  the 
centre  of  political  gravity  and  of  sovranty. 

This  was  especially  true  of  those  towns, 
which  had  succeeded  in  making  themselves 
centres  of  manufacturing  industry,  and  thus 
to  draw  wealth  into  their  hands  from  less 
advanced  countries.  The  towns  of  Flanders 
had  made  that  naturally  barren  region  into 
the  foremost  industrial  centre  of  northern 
Europe,  able  to  meet  the  dukes  of  Bur- 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

gundy  and  the  kings  of  France  on  equal 
terms,  as  the  cities  of  northern  Italy  had 
met  the  emperors  a  century  earlier. 

As  the  town's  people  were  now  the 
wealthiest  class  in  Europe,  the  fact  became 
visible  in  both  their  public  and  their  domestic 
architecture.  The  great  cathedral  churches 
of  northern  Europe  were  not  usually  the 
fruit  of  royal  or  noble  piety  and  generosity, 
or  the  creation  of  the  monastic  orders  or  of 
wealthy  churchmen.  They  were  built  and 
adorned  by  the  tradesmen  of  the  towns  in 
which  they  stand,  and  were  rivalled  in  costli- 
ness and  beauty  by  the  magnificent  town- 
halls,  in  which  municipal  architecture  reaches 
its  highest  point. 

Many  of  the  private  houses  erected  during 
the  later  Middle  Ages  and  the  period  of  the 
Renascence  take  rank  among  the  finest 
monuments  of  artistic  taste  and  skill  which 
those  cities  possess.  Their  large  design  and 

84 


LATER  TOWN-HOUSE 

their  exquisite  details  show  them  to  be  the 
work  of  genuine  artists.  Those  of  Nurem- 
berg are  best  known,  but  many  French,  Ger- 
man and  Swiss  towns  are  the  fortunate 
possessors  of  others  not  less  handsome.  The 
men  of  that  age  loved  to  beautify  not  only 
the  houses  in  which  they  worshipped  God, 
but  also  the  places  of  their  daily  toil  and  their 
nightly  rest — of  their  domestic  joys  and 
sorrows.1 

The  town-house  was  no  longer  a  "  block- 
house," as  Professor  Lund  calls  the  country- 
house.  The  close  association  of  thousands 
of  families  in  one  social  bond  had  transferred 

^ee  the  beautifully  illustrated  article  « Maison "  in  M. 
Viollet-le-Duc's  "  Dictionnaire  de  I' Architecture."  I  regret 
that  I  have  not  been  able  to  make  much  use  of  this 
eminent  author's  "  Histoire  de  I' Habitation  Humaine."  It 
seems  to  be  rather  the  geography  than  the  history  of  the 
subject,  as  no  growth  or  evolution  connects  its  several 
chapters.  On  the  other  hand  I  have  had  abundant  help 
from  Prof.  Troels  Lund's  work  "Das  Tdgliche  Leben  in 
Skandinamen  wahrend  des  Sechszehnten  Jahrhunderts " 
(Copenhagen:  1882). 

85 


\ 
THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

the  line  of  defence  from  the  threshold  to  the 
ring- wall,  and  to  the  strongly  built  and  care- 
fully watched  gates  which  pierced  it.  Build- 
ings outside  the  wall  had  not  much  more  than 
a  temporary  character,  as  they  were  liable  to 
be  swept  away  in  anticipation  of  a  siege,  so 
as  not  to  cover  the  approach  of  the  enemy. 

Yet  the  safety  within  the  town  was  not 
entire.  Thieves  abounded  and  shrank  from 
no  violence,  as  knowing  that  their  lives  were 
forfeit  if  they  were  taken.  Even  reputable 
London  tradesmen  were  known  to  have 
sallied  out  at  night-fall,  when  their  own 
shutters  were  up,  to  rob  the  shops  of  their 
neighbors.2  So  a  half-soldierly  quality  at- 
tached to  the  townsmen  even  in  time  of 
peace.  They  and  their  journeymen  might 
have  to  defend  their  stock  of  materials  and 
their  finished  work  by  force  of  arms,  in  the 
absence  of  any  police  worth  mentioning. 

2See  Pike's  "History  of  Crime  in  England,"  Vol.  i,  pp.  141-2. 

86 


LATER  TOWN-HOUSE 

And  this  fact  naturally  modified  the  con- 
struction of  their  houses. 

The  materials  of  which  town-houses  were 
built  were  changed  in  the  sixteenth  century. 
The  frame-work  of  wood  continued  in  use, 
but  the  filling  changed  from  clay  to  stone 
or  brick  and  was  laid  in  mortar.  On  the 
roofs  thatch  was  giving  place  to  shingles, 
tiles  or  slates,  under  the  pressure  of  the  law, 
but  slowly.  As  the  manufacture  of  glass 
was  naturalized  in  every  country  of  Europe 
during  this  century,  it  grew  cheaper  and 
more  in  use.  But  in  the  earlier  part  of  the 
century  it  was  still  so  costly  that  a  Danish 
king,  in  his  plans  for  a  new  palace,  specifies 
one  part  only  as  to  be  furnished  with  glass 
windows.  And  their  relative  costliness 
caused  such  windows  to  be  firmly  fixed  into 
the  wall,  to  avoid  the  risks  which  attended 
opening  and  shutting  them.  More  light  thus 
meant  less  fresh  air.  Before  the  end  of  the 

87 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

sixteenth  century,  however,  what  had  been 
the  privilege  of  a  few  was  becoming  the 
general  possession  of  all  but  the  poorest. 

Some  important  additions  were  made  to 
the  equipment  of  the  house,  while  the  older 
forms  of  furniture  were  elaborated  to  a  de- 
gree which  showed  the  new  taste  for  house- 
hold art.  One  was  an  hour-glass,  which, 
being  costly,  was  kept  in  a  place  of  especial 
safety.  Then  came  the  clock,  which  at  first 
lay  in  a  square  box,  face  up,  like  a  compass. 
The  Nurembergers  had  already  invented  the 
watch,  but  that  pocket  timepiece  was  rarely 
seen.  The  clock,  especially  if  it  struck  the 
hours,  and  still  more  if  the  quarters,  was  de- 
lightful, and  the  possession  of  it  conferred 
social  distinction.  But  clocks  generally  kept 
bad  time  before  Galilei's  discovery  of  the 
law  governing  the  motion  of  the  pendulum, 
and  the  application  of  the  discovery  to  clock- 
making  by  his  son.  The  actual  reliance  for 

88 


LATER  TOWN-HOUSE 

correct  time  was  on  the  sun-dial,  and  that 
of  course  was  rarely  available  in  the  cloudy 
atmosphere  of  northern  Europe. 

The  subdivision  of  the  house,  which  re- 
sulted from  the  introduction  of  the  chimney, 
followed  a  plan  so  general  that  it  may  be 
taken  as  normal.  Inside  the  front  door, 
which  generally  lay  open  in  the  daytime,  was 
an  anteroom  of  larger  dimensions  than  in 
later  houses.  Here  guests  laid  aside  their 
over-clothing  and  their  weapons,  except 
sword  or  dagger.  From  this  two  doors 
opened.  That  to  the  right  led  into  the  work- 
shop, where  master,  journeymen  and  ap- 
prentices labored.  From  this  room  there 
was  also  an  opening  into  a  stall  on  the  street, 
where  wares  were  offered  for  sale.  The  door 
on  the  left  was  into  the  living-room,  which 
was  at  all  ordinary  times  the  social  centre  of 
the  home.  It  was  lighted  as  well  as  warmed 
by  an  open  hearth-fire  under  a  chimney. 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

Here  old  and  young  gathered  in  the  even- 
ings, somewhat  as  in  the  old  Hall,  but  a  far 
less  miscellaneous  company.  Here  the  food 
was  served  from  the  adjacent  kitchen.  Here 
also  in  many  cases  were  box-beds  for  the 
older  members  of  the  family. 

On  high  days  and  holidays,  such  as  wed- 
dings, christenings,  and  the  visits  of  dis- 
tinguished guests,  the  living-room  was  dis- 
placed by  the  "  great  room,"  in  which  the 
family's  treasures  were  kept,  and  its  best 
decorative  hangings  were  displayed.  Among 
these  none  were  more  notable  than  the  great 
bed,  called  in  some  countries  "  the  heaven 
bed,"  because  of  its  canopy.  On  this  bed 
immense  sums  were  expended,  the  finest 
Flemish,  Italian  and  oriental  fabrics  being 
employed  in  its  curtains  and  its  canopy. 
Queens  and  princesses  vied  with  each  other 
in  their  outlay  on  their  beds ;  and  in  wills  of 
that  age  astonishing  sums  are  mentioned  as 

90 


LATER  TOWN-HOUSE 

having  been  spent  on  them.  In  earlier  times 
this  great  room  was  on  the  ground-floor;  but 
to  get  more  space  it  was  afterward  placed  on 
the  second  story.  The  facilities  that  story 
offered  for  several  bedrooms  were  not  em- 
ployed to  the  extent  we  should  expect.  The 
old  idea  of  the  family  sleeping  together 
seems  to  have  clung  to  them,  and  to  have 
made  them  crowd  into  one  or  a  few  rooms  at 
night.3 

Another  feature  of  the  upper  story  of  the 
town-house  was  the  open  gallery,  extending 
along  the  front  of  the  house,  under  the 
shelter  of  its  protruding  roof.  This  was 
originally  a  part  of  the  out-door  staircase, 
by  which  that  story  was  reached.  It  re- 

8  This  type  of  house  seems  to  have  been  brought  to  New 
England  by  the  early  settlers.  Mr.  William  B.  Weeden,  in 
his  "Economic  and  Social  History  of  New  England" 
(Boston,  1890)  says  that  "  a  common  arrangement  of  the 
first  floor  was  in  a  '  great  room ' — i.e.,  company  room — 
and  a  kitchen,  each  twenty  feet  square,  with  a  bedroom 
and  a  large  milk  and  cheese  pantry." 

91 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

placed  the  Bower  of  the  earlier  house,  as  in  it 
the  women  of  the  family  carried  on  the 
lighter  employments  of  their  sex,  while  they 
enjoyed  the  air  in  the  closest  approach  to 
purity  that  the  town's  streets  permitted.  It 
had  some  resemblance  to  the  open  loggia  of 
the  Italian  house. 

In  the  rear  of  the  living-room  lay  the 
kitchen,  with  a  large  hearth-fire  on  a  raised 
hearth,  and  a  chimney.  Seething  was  done 
in  great  kettles  suspended  over  the  fire  from 
the  crooks,  and  roasting  on  spits  placed  in 
front  of  the  open  fire  and  constantly  turned. 
In  great  houses  the  kitchen  fires  were  of 
charcoal  to  avoid  smoking  the  food;  but 
generally  the  fuel  was  wood  or  peat,  as  the 
possibilities  of  coal  had  not  been  discovered. 

The  provisions — as  indeed  the  word  means 
—were  not  bought  from  day  to  day,  but  pro- 
vided in  quantities  which  would}  last  for 
months  or  even  a  year.  Through  the  winter 

92 


LATER  TOWN-HOUSE 

salt  meats  and  fish  were  the  main  depend- 
ence, supplemented  by  game  and  fresh  fish 
in  summer.  The  favorite  dish  was  a  meat 
pasty  (dish-pie).  Vegetables  were  used 
very  little,  being  in  some  countries  inaccessi- 
ble. In  England  kitchen-gardening  was 
introduced  by  the  religious  refugees  from 
France  and  the  Low  Countries.  Before  that 
Queen  Elizabeth  had  to  send  to  the  Con- 
tinent for  the  vegetables,  when  she  wanted 
to  give  a  grand  dinner.  The  cookery-books 
of  even  the  next  century  surprise  us  by  their 
slight  reference  to  vegetable  food,  and  their 
array  of  meat  and  fish  dishes. 

Water,  being  generally  impure  in  the 
supply  of  the  towns,  was  not  drunk  by  young 
or  old,  rich  or  poor.  Every  house  brewed 
its  own  beer,  and  the  big  kettles  of  the 
kitchen  came  into  this  use. 

The  last  room  I  shall  mention  is  the  bath- 
room, for  giving  the  steam  bath  of  the  type 

93 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

now  known  as  Turkish  or  Russian.  When 
the  peoples  of  Europe  wore  fur  or  wool  next 
the  skin,  the  use  of  the  steam  bath  was 
general,  and  was  thought  indispensable. 
England  alone  had  not  such  baths,  but  we 
find  them  coming  into  use  as  a  novelty  in 
Elizabeth's  reign.  On  the  Continent  every 
householder  who  could  afford  it  had  his  bath- 
room of  this  type.  But  even  where  he  had 
one,  he  was  not  unapt  to  prefer  the  public 
baths  of  the  same  sort,  which  existed  in  all 
the  continental  towns,  and  especially  to  take 
his  guests  to  these.  They  were  the  club- 
houses and  the  taverns  of  the  time.  Ac- 
quaintances were  made,  good  fellowship 
cultivated,  games  played,  and  beer  in  abun- 
dance drunk  in  the  soaking  atmosphere. 

The  discovery  that  these  places  were  the 
means  of  spreading  diseases  gave  them  their 
first  backset,  and  brought  the  home  bath 
again  into  favor.  But  the  great  change 

94 


LATER  TOWN-HOUSE 

came  with  the  general  use  of  linen  for  under- 
clothing, which  made  it  possible  for  men  to 
be  comfortable  with  less  bathing,  as  they 
wore  clean  linen  next  their  skins.  This 
brought  with  it  the  family  festival  called 
"  washing  day,"  observed  as  a  weekly  feast 
in  modern  times,  but  formerly  but  once  a 
month,  or  even  in  some  countries  but  twice  a 
year.  In  the  latter  case  an  entire  room  of 
the  house  was  devoted  to  the  reception  of 
soiled  clothes. 

The  streets  were  less  changed  than  were 
the  houses.  The  townsman  admitted  of 
interference  on  the  part  of  the  government 
in  many  other  things,  but  not  with  his  privi- 
lege of  keeping  the  surroundings  of  his  house 
iri  a  condition  which  made  life  uncomfortable 
and  death  by  pestilence  common.  He  still 
claimed  his  rights  in  the  space  between  the 
house  and  the  middle  of  the  street.  That 
part  which  lay  next  his  house,  and  was 

95 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

covered  by  his  protruding  upper-stories  and 
his  projecting  roof,  he  treated  as  especially 
his  own.  Here  he  erected  his  stall  for  selling 
his  wares,  and  added  benches  for  the  com- 
fort of  himself  and  his  visitors,  chests  to  hold 
household  refuse,  and  the  like. 

The  increase  of  carts  and  coaches  was  be- 
ginning to  encroach  on  his  rights,  by  using 
much  of  the  narrow  street  for  travel.  This 
space  was  not  cleaned,  nor  was  there  any 
even  pavement  under  its  accumulations.  The 
driver  proceeded  at  his  own  risks,  over  piles 
of  refuse,  deep  hollows  full  of  foul  water, 
and  the  like.  By  way  of  a  partial  drainage, 
the  middle  of  the  street,  which  had  been  its 
highest  point,  was  now  hollowed  into  a 
channel,  which  served  as  open  sewer.  Foot- 
passengers  now  walked  as  close  to  the  houses 
as  possible.  Somewhat  later  posts  were 
placed  to  distinguish  the  sidewalk  from  the 

96 


LATER  TOWN-HOUSE 

rest  of  the  street,  but  there  was  no  smoother 
pavement 4  for  those  who  used  it. 

In  the  centuries  succeeding,  the  most  im- 
portant change  in  the  town-house  was  the 
removal  of  trades  to  separate  buildings,  first 
workshops,  and  then  factories.  This  meant 
the  more  complete  dedication  of  the  house  to 
home  uses,  through  the  elimination  of  alien 
elements  from  its  life.  James  Watt  by  the 
invention  of  an  economic  steam-engine 
(1769)  enabled  an  organization  of  industry 
the  workshop  could  not  compete  with,  as  to 
quality  and  price.  But  even  before,  as  well 
as  after,  Watt's  invention,  the  liberation  of 
women  from  many  domestic  employments 
was  in  progress.  New  and  independent 
industries  sprang  up,  which  took  from  them 

4  In  America,  Philadelphia  was  the  first  city  that  estab- 
lished smooth  sidewalks,  paving  them  with  brick.  Franklin 
remarks  that  a  Philadelphian  walking  over  the  cobble- 
stones of  New  York  seemed  to  be  suffering  from  corns; 
while  a  New  Yorker  on  the  sidewalks  of  Philadelphia  re- 
minded him  of  a  parrot  sprawling  over  a  mahogany  table. 

7  97 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

their  spinning  and  weaving,  knitting,  tailor- 
ing, candle  and  soap-making,  brewing  of 
beer,  baking,  distilling  of  extracts,  preserv- 
ing fruits  and  berries,  plaiting  of  straw,  and 
the  like.  This  process  of  elimination  was 
not  altogether  relished  by  the  house-mis- 
tresses, who  felt  at  each  change  that  they 
were  losing  a  province  of  life  which  belonged 
to  them.  My  paternal  grandmother  used  to 
say  that  the  house  would  lose  half  its  charm, 
if  the  maids  did  not  sit  down  to  the  spinning- 
wheel  when  their  other  tasks  were  done,  and 
give  her  the  familiar  music  of  early  days. 
But  both  the  better  quality  and  the  lower 
price  of  the  goods  produced  on  a  larger  scale 
and  with  modern  machinery,  carried  the  day, 
against  a  sentiment  which  Mr.  Ruskin  tried 
to  revive  in  his  time. 

A  still  more  beneficent  change  was  the 
introduction  of  pure  water  into  the  cities, 


LATER  TOWN-HOUSE 

and  into  houses  within  city  bounds.  There 
the  modern  world  was  challenged  by  the 
great  remains  of  the  acqueducts,  which 
brought  pure  water  from  the  Sabine  and 
Latin  hills  to  the  imperial  city.  The  chal- 
lenge has  been  more  than  met,  as  under- 
takings of  this  sort  in  modern  times  surpass 
those  of  the  ancient  world  in  the  audacity  of 
their  ingenuity,  the  distances  overcome,  and 
the  abundance  of  the  supply.  The  gain  to 
the  family  was  in  quantity  as  well  as  quality, 
a  sufficiency  for  all  household  uses,  whether 
of  cleansing,  or  cooking,  or  drinking,  having 
been  secured  it.  And  the  purity  of  the 
supply  established  the  modern  habit  of 
drinking  water,  to  which  our  remoter  fore- 
fathers had  a  well  grounded  repugnance. 

Not  until  early  in  the  nineteenth  century 
did  there  arise  any  substitute  for  the  tallow 
candle,  and  the  lamp  for  burning  fish-oil. 

99 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

Then  from  Glasgow  came  illuminating  gas, 
which,  from  London  and  Philadelphia  as 
centres  of  this  enterprise,  was  spread  over 
the  two  worlds.  The  gain  was  much  greater 
than  we  are  apt  to  realize.  Candle-grease 
had  been  one  of  the  plagues  of  life.  It 
dropt  on  clothes,  stained  carpets,  spotted 
furniture,  and  added  an  undesirable  flavor 
to  food.  And  candle  light  was  so  meagre 
and  inadequate,  especially  when  a  church  or 
other  public  building  had  to  be  lighted,  that 
its  use  could  not  but  impair  sight.  The 
staunchest  upholders  of  the  traditions  of  the 
past  did  not  deny  that  in  this  respect  the 
world  changed  for  the  better. 

Illuminating  gas  also  enabled  the  lighting 
of  the  streets  in  a  new  and  fairly  effective 
fashion.  Heretofore  smoky  oil  lamps  hung 
across  the  street  on  ropes,  had  been  the  only 

dependence,  just  making  "  darkness  visible." 

100 


LATER  TOWN-HOUSE 

Hence  the  necessity  for  link-boys,  to  light 
to  their  homes  those  who  must  return  after 
night-fall,  especially  in  winter.  Gaslight 
also  made  possible  the  policing  of  the  towns, 
for  the  safety  of  life  and  property.  The 
old  watchman,  carrying  his  horn  lanthorn, 
and  calling  out  the  hours  as  they  passed, 
gave  way  to  the  modern  officer  on  his  beat. 

The  policeman's  work  was  made  much 
easier  by  the  construction  of  proper  roads 
and  streets,  to  the  advantage  of  health  'as 
well  as  travel.  Outside  of  Holland- .and  ra 
few  favored  localities,  the  old  roads  were 
little  better  than  tracks  worn  by  travel,  up 
hill  and  down  dale,  involving  almost  a  cer- 
tainty of  an  upset  on  any  journey  of  greater 
length.  It  was  in  the  second  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century  that  the  business  of  road- 
making  and  street-making  took  hold  of  the 

practical  English  mind,  with  the  result  that 
101 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

the  roads  of  the  British  Empire  now  sur- 
pass those  of  Assyrian  and  the  Roman,  and 
are  not  yet  equalled  by  those  of  any  other 
country.  Not  only  do  good  highways 
traverse  every  part  of  the  British  Islands, 
but  even  in  outlying  dependencies — in  Hong 
Kong  or  Mauritius — better  roads  are  to  be 
found  than  between  the  largest  centres  of 
population  in  America. 

..Thfer  ;city  streets  generally  presented  a 
mojve  (Difficult  problem,  as  obliged  to  sustain 
a  much  greater  stress  of  traffic,  and  as  re- 
quiring a  nicer  finish.  The  middens  were 
now  cleaned  out  of  the  towns,  and  the  space 
thus  laid  bare  was  taken  in  hand  by  the 
municipal  rulers  to  supply  a  place  of  safe 
and  pleasant  travel.  The  mere  separation 
for  foot-passengers  of  a  part  of  the  streets 
from  the  rest  by  posts — those  posts  which 

Dr.  Johnson  must  touch  on  his  way  home  to 
102 


LATER  TOWN-HOUSE 

Bolt  Court  or  Gough  Square — gave  way  to 
a  raised  and  smooth  pathway  bounded  by  a 
kerb-stone,  and  unencumbered  by  the  stalls 
and  the  benches  of  the  house-owners.  The 
roadway  was  the  subject  of  various  experi- 
ments before  Telford — the  Macadam  of  the 
cities — showed  that  the  main  thing  in  a  good 
street  is  not  the  surface,  but  the  foundation 
on  which  it  rests.  This  settled,  it  remains 
to  determine  what  possible  surface  is  the 
best,  i.e.,  lasts  longest,  is  the  most  easily  re- 
paired, is  least  hard  on  the  feet  and  legs  of 
horses,  and  is  the  wholesomest.  It  cannot  be 
said  that  this  problem  has  been  solved,  but 
the  present  choice  lies  between  asphalt  and 
wooden  blocks. 

The  open  sewer,  which  took  the  place  of 
the  burgomaster's  stone  in  the  middle  of  the 
street,  was  now  displaced  by  underground 
sewers,  not  without  some  increase  of  peril 

103 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

to  health,  as  these  are  connected  with  the 
latrines  of  the  houses,  and  sewer-gas  is  the 
plague  both  of  the  builder  and  the  plumber. 
The  regular  cleaning  of  the  streets  was 
undertaken,  but  in  a  fashion  which  still  is 
very  unsatisfactory.  The  asphalt  pave- 
ments of  our  time  bring  into  light  the  harm 
done  by  the  horses  of  a  great  city  in  keeping 
its  streets  dirty,  and  suggesting  the  exclu- 
sion of  all  quadrupeds  from  the  city  limits. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  HOUSE  OF  TO-DAY 

IF  any  one  who  knew  nothing  of  the  his- 
tory of  the  House,  were  asked  to  define  the 
word,  he  probably  would  answer  that  it  is  a 
structure  of  wood  or  masonry,  divided  into 
stories  by  floors  of  wood,  and  these  into 
rooms  by  slight  party  walls;  lighted  by 
glass  windows;  heated  by  stoves,  furnaces, 
or  open  hearth-fires;  roofed  with  shingles, 
slates,  tiles  or  sheets  of  metal ;  and  meant  for 
the  home  of  a  natural  family  and  its  servants. 

This  definition  stands  for  the  stage  now 
reached  in  the  evolution  of  the  House,  but 
at  no  point  does  it  define  the  House  in  which 
our  forefathers  lived  a  thousand  years  ago. 
And  probably  it  is  just  as  poor  a  description 
of  the  houses  in  which  our  posterity  will  be 
living  a  thousand  years  hence.  It  stands 

105 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

merely  for  the  present  stage  in  a  process  of 
development,  which  began  with  the  cave, 
and  will  end  with  the  palace.  In  coming 
centuries  people  will  wonder  at  the  incon- 
veniences we  put  up  with,  at  the  awkward 
arrangements  which  seem  to  us  the  height  of 
ingenuity,  and  at  our  lack  of  insight  into 
the  nature  of  the  problem  we  had  to  solve  in 
devising  a  suitable  home  for  the  family. 

To  learn  what  direction  will  be  taken  by 
the  farther  evolution  of  the  House,  we 
naturally  look  back  upon  that  through  which 
it  has  passed  already.  And  we  find  here 
four  indications  worthy  of  notice:  Health- 
fulness,  comfort,  adaptability  and  economy. 

1.  Healthfulness. — The  primitive  house, 
both  in  its  structure  and  its  environment 
showed  the  indifference  of  its  occupants  to 
the  things  which  make  for  health  and  length 
of  life.  They  dispensed  with  ventilation,  ex- 
cept where  it  was  forced  upon  them  by  bad 

106 


THE  HOUSE  OF  TO-DAY 

carpentry  and  defective  masonry.  They 
permitted  a  degree  of  filthiness  in  their  halls, 
which  we  would  find  intolerable  in  our 
streets.  And  they  accumulated  dunghills  at 
their  very  doors.  Their  streets  were  narrow 
and  unsafe  for  every  kind  of  travel;  and 
were  encroached  upon  above  by  projecting 
stories  and  roofs. 

These  evils  we  have  corrected  or  are  cor- 
recting. In  the  most  crowded  parts  of  our 
great  cities  there  is  a  striving  after  a  cleanli- 
ness, which  was  not  to  be  seen  in  the  royal 
palaces  of  the  past.  The  public  mind  is  per- 
vaded by  an  enthusiasm  for  sanitary  precau- 
tions of  this  kind.  Sanitas  sanitatum,  omnia 
SanitaSj  as  D'Israeli  said  in  jesting  variation 
of  the  Royal  Preacher  (Ecclesiastes  i,  2). 
But  our  methods  of  heating  our  houses  are 
still  highly  unwholesome.  The  ordinary 
furnace  discharges  into  our  rooms  currents 
of  parched  and  moistureless  air,  which  work 

107 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

ruin  to  throat  and  lungs,  skin  and  liver,  in 
winter.  And  in  summer  the  ventilation  of 
our  rooms  without  introducing  cold  drafts  is 
an  unsolved  problem. 

Especially  the  cleansing  of  the  house  and 
its  adjacent  street  presents  a  difficulty  we 
have  not  overcome.  We  are  beginning  to 
learn  how  deleterious  dust 1  is  to  the  human 
organism,  and  how  fertile  in  infection  in 
pulmonic  and  other  diseases.  City  homes 
stand  on  streets,  where  every  wind  carries 

1  Archaeological  exploration  has  shown  us  how  effectually 
it  can  bury  a  city,  during  any  long  suspension  of  popular 
activity.  It  was  necessary  to  dig  down  thirty-seven  feet  to 
reach  that  pavement  of  the  Roman  Forum,  on  which  Cato 
and  Cicero  had  walked.  This  was  supposed  to  be  the 
earliest  level,  but  on  cleaning  out  some  of  the  old  wells  in 
the  Forum,  they  came  on  one  pavement  under  another  to 
the  number  of  a  dozen.  So  the  remains  of  Nineveh  were 
a  mound  of  dust,  which  Xenophon,  in  the  Anabasis,  men- 
tions as  being  on  the  line  of  march  of  the  retreating 
Greeks,  but  without  the  slightest  notion  of  what  those 
dust-heaps  covered.  Schliemann  found  one  Troy  beneath 
another,  and  much  the  same  condition  at  Argos.  The 
Palestine  Survey  found  seven  such  cities  in  the  mound 
where  Lachish  stood,  and  the  third  from  the  bottom  was 
that  which  Joshua  destroyed  in  his  conquest  of  Canaan. 

108 


THE  HOUSE  OF  TO-DAY 

with  it  a  load  of  dust  of  varied  character, 
and  often  whirls  it  high  into  the  air.  When 
a  house  long  untenanted  is  opened  anew,  it 
is  found  that  everything  in  it  is  coated  with 
dust,  in  spite  of  efforts  made  to  seal  it 
against  this  subtle  intruder.  And  for  most 
of  us  the  only  correctives  are  the  broom,  the 
brush,  and  the  duster,  which  do  as  much  to 
diffuse  it  as  to  remove  it. 

2.  Comfort. — Our  forefathers  seemed 
to  regard  as  a  piece  of  effeminacy  that  con- 
sideration for  our  ease  which  makes  us  prefer 
soft  to  hard,  adaptation  to  the  human  form 
in  furniture,2  and  the  like.  We  have  ad- 
vanced greatly  on  their  arrangements.  We 
can  be  reasonably  warm  in  winter,  if  not 

2  It  is  noteworthy  that  there  was  a  prejudice  at  first 
against  taking  advantage  of  many  comforts.  Women  at 
least  held  it  a  point  of  good  manners,  until  within  the 
memory  of  people  still  living,  not  to  let  their  backs  come 
into  contact  with  the  back  of  a  chair,  nor  to  sit  in  any  but 
the  most  erect  position.  It  was  also  an  offence  to  rest 
elbow  or  arm  on  a  dining  table. 
109 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

always  reasonably  cool  in  summer.  Carpets 
and  rugs  are  softer  under  the  foot  than  a 
bare  or  a  sanded  floor.  Windows  which  shut 
and  open,  and  are  fitted  with  glass,  are  better 
than  holes  in  the  wall  shut  by  a  wooden 
shutter,  or  glass  sashes  imbedded  in  the  wall 
for  safety.  Doors  which  fit  their  frames 
save  us  from  drafts.  Wall  papers  of  pleas- 
ant design,  and  pictures  multiplied  by 
modern  processes,  rest  the  eye  better  than 
did  a  bare  wall,  or  even  the  elaborate  tapes- 
tries of  the  wealthy.  And  the  whole  equip- 
ment of  a  house, — tables,  chairs,  lounges, 
china,  cutlery,  etc. — are  obtainable  of  better 
design  and  at  less  cost,  and  enable  us  to 
take  life  easier. 

But  we  still  climb  from  story  to  story 
on  the  series  of  small  platforms  we  call  stair- 
cases, at  risk  of  life  and  limb,  and  accept 
these  as  a  law  of  nature,  although  safety- 
elevators  have  made  them  superfluous.  The 
no 


THE  HOUSE  OF  TO-DAY 

time  may  come  when  curious  folk  will  go  a 
long  way  to  see  a  staircase,  and  will  ask  any 
of  us  who  survive,  "  Did  you  really  go  up 
and  down  by  that  funny  arrangement? 
Didn't  you  find  it  very  tiresome,  and  very 
dangerous?  Did  people  never  fall  on  it?" 
And  then  we  will  begin  to  recall  our  own 
tumbles,  from  the  first  days  of  adventurous 
youth  to  the  coming  of  the  domestic  lift. 
And  perhaps  we  will  remember  also  how  a 
fall  down  a  staircase  cost  us  Helen  Hunt 
Jackson,  and  other  less  notable  victims. 

We  also  still  endure  in  our  houses  in  the 
heat  of  summer,  the  added  heat  of  kitchen 
ranges  for  the  preparation  of  food.  We 
still  endure  the  heat  from  gas-jets  and  oil- 
lamps  for  lighting  the  house,  when  far 
cooler  means  of  illumination  are  accessible  to 
most  of  us.  We  still  have  loads  of  coal  car- 
ried into  our  basements,  to  keep  up  fires  in 

furnaces  and  ranges,   when  these   services 
111 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

could  be  far  better  rendered  from  outside 
our  homes. 

3.  Adaptability. — The  primitive  house 
was  adapted  to  the  uses  of  the  primitive 
group,  which  was  a  military,  industrial  and 
educational  unit.  That  group  has  passed 
away,  leaving  traces  of  its  existence  and  its 
demands  on  the  house  of  our  day,  especially 
in  the  perpetuation  of  trades  within  the 
house.  Men's  work  has  gone  to  factory 
or  workshop.  The  trades  of  the  brewer, 
baker,  chandler,  weaver  and  tailor  have  re- 
moved the  most  of  the  employments  once 
imposed  by  tradition  on  the  house-mistress 
and  her  companions. 

But  some  linger  still,  (a)  The  public 
laundry  has  not  yet  entirely  superseded  the 
domestic  washing-day.  (&)  The  work  of 
the  baker  is  still  rivalled  in  many  homes, 
where  the  preference  for  "  home-made 
bread "  lingers.  (c)  The  heating  of  the 


THE  HOUSE  OF  TO-DAY 

house  in  most  cases  is  done  from  its  own 
furnace,  instead  of  having  heat  supplied 
from  some  central  plant,  where  the  use  of 
coal  in  a  scientific  way  ought  to  make  it 
cheaper  and  better,  (d)  Worst  of  all,  the 
preparation  of  food  is  a  business  still  im- 
posed on  the  mistress  and  her  servants. 

These  are  the  principal  reminders  of  the 
old  system,  in  which  the  housewife  was  truly 
a  "  Gill  of  all  trades,"  and  had  very  little 
time  or  strength  for  her  proper  work  of 
making  the  home  attractive  and  pleasant,  the 
centre  of  human  affections,  the  resting-place 
of  the  weary.  They  all  are  obstacles  to  the 
adaptation  of  the  modern  house  to  the  real 
needs  of  the  natural  family. 

Especially  the  modern  house  fails  to 
realize  its  idea  as  the  home  of  such  a  family, 
because  of  the  residence  of  others  than  the 
family  within  its  walls.  In  the  early  times 
their  presence  was  unavoidable,  and  their 

8  us 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

relations  with  the  family  were  personal  and 
human.  They  were  members  of  the  only 
group  that  could  constitute  a  household  with 
safety;  and  a  bond  of  personal  loyalty  held 
them  to  the  head  of  the  house.  But  the  ser- 
vant of  to-day  is  essentially  a  wage-earner, 
living  in  the  house  on  a  commercial  basis, 
and  supposed  to  be  compensated  for  such 
services  as  are  rendered  by  the  money-pay- 
ment. And  yet  there  clings  to  the  position 
something  of  the  old  claim  to  more  than 
wages,  and  this  is  reinforced  by  continuous 
residence  in  the  house. 

Furthermore  the  mistress  of  the  house  is 
obliged  by  the  conditions  of  modern  service 
to  undertake  the  rule  and  discipline  of  a 
number  of  persons,  whether  many  or  few, 
who  have  no  kinship  or  personal  relation 
with  her,  in  addition  to  the  care  of  her  chil- 
dren and  her  husband.  She  has  some  re- 
sponsibility for  their  health,  their  morals  and 

114 


THE  HOUSE  OF  TO-DAY 

their  manners.  She  has  to  select  her  ser- 
vants, train  the  inexpert,  control  the  way- 
ward, and  keep  all  in  some  sort  of  good 
humor  with  each  other  and  with  herself. 
This  requirement  in  many  cases  falls  upon 
women  who  have  had  no  experience  in  their 
youth  to  guide  them  in  later  years,  as  they 
have  been  brought  by  change  of  fortune  into 
a  position  in  which  they  look  to  others  to  do 
for  them  what  they  always  had  done  for 
themselves.  And  the  housewife  has  to  en- 
dure frequent  changes  in  their  number,  as 
they  grow  dissatisfied,  and  seek  to  "  better 
themselves,"  by  finding  knother  mistress. 

On  the  other  side  the  maids  have  enough 
to  complain  of.  They  are  obliged,  in  many 
cases,  to  live  under  rules  which  are  extem- 
porized from  day  to  day.  They  are  required 
to  do  work  in  a  needless  hurry,  because  they 
are  not  notified  in  time  what  is  expected  of 
them.  They  are  stowed  away  in  any  part 

115 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

of  the  house  which  is  not  needed  for  other 
uses.  Their  rooms  are  often  so  cold  in  win- 
ter and  so  hot  in  summer,  as  to  be  almost 
uninhabitable.  They  have  no  society  except 
that  of  other  servants,  if  there  are  any;  and 
their  whole  time,  except  what  is  needed  for 
sleep,  and  with  the  exception  of  one-half 
day  a  week  and  every  other  Sunday,  is 
exacted  of  them.  So  most  of  the  girls,  who 
might  have  been  available  for  domestic  ser- 
vice, revolt  against  its  conditions,  and  seek 
employment  in  shops  and  factories,  where 
they  are  mistresses  of  their  time  outside  of 
working  hours,  and  do  not  live  the  lonely 
life  of  the  household  servant.  An  American 
manufacturer,  who  employed  girls  by  the 
hundred  in  his  garment  factory  at  five  dol- 
lars a  week,  was  actually  unable  to  secure 
one  of  them  for  service  in  his  suburban 
home  at  twenty-five  dollars  a  month,  with 
her  board  and  lodging.  New  York  reports 

116 


THE  HOUSE  OF  TO-DAY 

places  for  100,000  domestic  servants,  which 
cannot  be  filled.  Every  class  in  turn  has 
abandoned  such  service — native  Americans, 
Irish,  Scandinavians,  Germans — until  it 
seems  probable  that  the  main  dependence 
will  be  the  negro  and  the  Chinese.  Yet  these 
very  classes  enter  the  higher  service  of  the 
trained  nurse,  where  greater  liberty  is 
enjoyed.  [ 

The  portrait  of  the  modern  servant  drawn 
by  the  mistress,  and  that  of  the  modern  mis- 
tress drawn  by  the  servant,  are  equally  un- 
true to  life,  except  in  a  minority  of  cases. 
Human  beings,  living  under  the  same  roof, 
come  in  most  cases  to  a  sort  of  understand- 
ing, which  often  rises  through  esteem  into 
affection.  But  there  is  truth  enough  in  the 
complaints  on  both  sides  to  show  that  the 
present  arrangements  for  the  care  of  the 
home  are  becoming  intolerable,  and  that  a 

117 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

better  organization  of  this  side  of  household 
life  is  imperatively  needed. 

It  is  not  strange,  therefore,  that  many 
families  have  given  up  housekeeping  under 
present  conditions,  and  find  refuge  in  lodg- 
ings or  apartment-houses.  It  even  has  been 
suggested  that  this  indicates  what  will  be  the 
housekeeping  of  the  future,  when  separate 
houses  will  be  abandoned,  and  families  will 
gather  in  large  groups  under  one  roof.  It  is 
undeniable  that  the  apartment-house  has 
been  a  relief  for  many  weary  and  perplexed 
housekeepers,  as  it  furnishes  an  escape  from 
the  wear  and  tear  of  preparing  three  meals  a 
day,  and  from  the  perplexities  of  the  prob- 
lem of  domestic  service,  besides  the  avoid- 
ance of  stair- climbing  where  the  suite  of 
rooms  is  all  on  one  floor.  It  is  not,  however, 
an  ideal  home  for  a  family  with  small  chil- 
dren, and  for  their  sake  it  is  desirable  to 

118 


THE  HOUSE  OF  TO-DAY 

maintain  the  seclusion  of  the  separate  home, 
while  improving  its  conditions. 

4.  Economy. — The  modern  house  is  far 
more  costly  than  it  need  be,  through  lack  of 
proper  management.  This  applies  first  of 
all  to  its  purchases.  The  housekeeper  of 
earlier  days  laid  in  a  large  stock  of  neces- 
saries of  the  sorts  which  would  keep  until 
used,  and  thus  was  able  to  buy  at  low  prices. 
Such  supplies  now  are  usually  bought  in 
small  quantities  and  at  high  rates,  because 
we  are  paying  the  dealer  for  his  time,  trouble 
and  use  of  his  capital.  Losses  also  are  in- 
curred through  unintelligent  buying,  as 
inferior  articles  are  passed  off  for  the  best, 
and  adulterated  goods  at  the  price  of  pure. 
By  the  co-operation  of  several  households 
the  services  of  an  expert  buyer  could  be  had 
on  terms  which  would  result  in  gain  to  all 
of  them. 

The  direct  use  of  coal  for  heating  and 

119 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

cooking  within  the  house  involves  great 
waste.  Most  of  the  caloric  we  obtain  from  it 
passes  up  the  chimney,  while  coal-gas  is 
often  discharged  through  the  house.  The 
scientific  use  of  coal  under  co-operative 
arrangements  would  secure  us  both  services 
at  far  less  cost,  and  would  diminish  the  con- 
sumption of  this  valuable  mineral. 

In  the  chapters  which  follow  I  shall  try  to 
foresee  the  changes  which  are  impending  in 
household  management. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  HOUSE  THAT  Is  To  BE:  ITS 
ORGANIZATION 

To  avoid  repetitions  I  shall  not  discuss 
the  methods  of  household  reform  in  just  the 
order  in  which  I  have  enumerated  the  evils 
of  which  these  are  to  rid  us.  I  shall,  how- 
ever, cover  the  same  ground  in  constructive 
suggestion  as  I  have  in  criticism. 

It  will  be  observed  that  in  almost  every 
case  the  solution  of  our  present  difficulties 
must  be  found  in  the  application  of  co-opera- 
tive method,  to  bring  the  families  out  of  their 
isolation  into  a  plan  of  working  together  for 
the  relief  of  social  burdens.  Free  co-opera- 
tion, indeed,  will  be  found  to  be  the  cor-? 
rective  of  most  of  the  evils  on  which  the 
Socialist  rests  his  case  for  the  overthrow 

of  the  present  order  of  society.     And  no- 
121 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

where  will  its  usefulness  be  more  seen  than 
in  the  reconstruction  of  household  relations. 

1.  Household  service  will  cease  to  be  a 
matter  of  contract  between  a  single  house- 
keeper and  a  single  servant,  and  will  become 
one  between  a  group  of  householders  and  a 
staff  of  expert  servants,  through  the  agency 
of  a  chartered  corporation,  or  a  co-operative 
association.  This  agency  will  send  its 
workers  to  the  houses  in  its  field  of  action  at 
hours  specified  in  the  contract,  to  do  what  is 
to  be  done,  and  then  pass  on  to  another 
home  of  the  group.  They  will  be  responsi- 
ble, not  to  the  house-mistress  whose  work 
they  do,  but  to  the  agency,  which  will  hear 
all  complaints  and  act  upon  them. 

Each  corporation  or  association  will  repre- 
sent families  of  about  the  same  social  class, 
numerous  enough  to  make  its  organization 
worth  while.  But  every  family  will  be  free 
to  withdraw  from  its  agreement  when  the 


ITS  ORGANIZATION 

time  that  specifies  has  expired,  and  to  seek 
service  elsewhere. 

Of  course  each  of  these  agencies,  either 
by  itself  or  in  co-operation  with  others,  will 
have  a  staff  of  extra  workers — including 
possibly  physicians  and  trained  nurses — who 
can  be  summoned  for  an  emergency  by  tele- 
phone. And  it  may  supply  an  exceptional 
class,  who  will  remain  in  the  house  overnight, 
for  such  work  as  the  care  of  infants.  But 
ordinarily  the  workers  the  agency  supplies 
will  have  their  homes  elsewhere. 

The  advantages  of  this  plan  over  that  now 
in  use,  will  be  found  to  be  manifold. 

(a)  It  will  be  found  more  economical 
than  the  hiring  of  servants  for  a  single  home. 
It  is  nothing  but  the  application  to  this  field 
of  employment  of  the  co-operative  arrange- 
ment, by  which  expense  has  been  lightened 
and  service  improved  in  every  other.  The 
time  was  when  the  household  which  needed 

123 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

the  service  of  a  physician,  a  musician,  a 
teacher,  or  even  a  barber,  had  to  employ  and 
support  a  person  who  claimed  expertness  in 
such  things.  My  grandfather  gave  a  man 
a  cottage  on  his  property  rent-free,  on  con- 
dition that  he  would  shave  him  every  morn- 
ing. And  such  arrangements,  correspond- 
ing somewhat  to  "  feudal  services,"  were  not 
unusual  a  hundred  years  ago.  It  is  because 
the  application  of  the  principle  to  the  inti- 
macies of  family  life  is  harder,  that  we  still 
keep  servants  of  our  own,  instead  of  seeking 
the  service  of  experts,  who  would  minister  in 
other  households  as  well  as  our  own. 

(b)  The  gain  to  family  privacy  will  be 
great,  when  ordinarily  the  family  will  have 
its  home  to  itself,  except  at  the  hours  when 
it  expects  the  attendance  of  these  workers. 
It  was  the  demand  for  privacy  which 
abolished  the  old  Hall,  with  its  association 
of  the  members  of  the  "  menie  "  both  day 

124 


ITS  ORGANIZATION 

and  night.  It  was  the  same  demand  which 
broke  up  the  house  into  rooms,  and  gradu- 
ally abolished  the  earlier  tendency  to  gather 
into  groups  for  sleep  and  safety.  And  it 
now  demands  the  relief  of  the  family  from 
the  presence  of  alien  and  often  hostile  ele- 
ments, and  the  substitution  of  workers  who 
will  have  their  homes  elsewhere. 

(c)  The  efficiency  of  the  service  will  be 
much  greater.  The  employing  agency  will 
be  able  to  secure  the  service  of  a  much  more 
intelligent  class  of  women  than  will  consent 
to  live  under  the  domestic  rule  which  now 
exists.  They  will  accept  the  new  arrange- 
ment because  it  will  leave  them  the  control 
of  their  time  after  their  day's  work  is  done; 
it  will  place  them  under  the  direction  of  a 
company,  whose  rules  will  be  known  before- 
hand, and  not  extemporized  from  day  to 
day;  and  it  will  free  them  from  the  obliga- 

125 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

tion  to  show  the  house-mistress  other  defer- 
ence than  simple,  natural  courtesy. 

But  to  obtain  and  support  this  position, 
they  will  have  to  acquire  expertness  in  the 
branch  of  service  they  accept.  At  present 
only  the  rich  are  able  to  employ  so  many 
servants  that  each  may  be  required  to  be 
expert  in  his  (or  her)  proper  work.  Others 
have  to  accept  those  who  do  many  things 
imperfectly,  rather  than  one  thing  well. 
But  the  new  arrangement  will  secure  for 
them  the  advantage  now  confined  to  the 
rich. 

(d)  The  house-mistress  will  be  set  free 
from  a  number  of  requirements  which  do 
not  properly  belong  to  her  position.  She 
will  no  longer  have  to  select,  train  and  super- 
vise a  number  of  work-people,  and  to  see 
them  provided  in  the  matter  of  food,  lodg- 
ing, health  and  good  humor.  She  will  enjoy 
freedom  from  what  is  too  often  unfriendly 

126 


ITS  ORGANIZATION 

observation,  ministering  to  neighborhood 
gossip.  She  will  come  into  contact  with  a 
superior  class  of  women,  and  at  specified 
hours  of  the  day.  She  will  be  able  to  give 
herself  to  her  proper  work  as  the  home- 
maker,  to  the  care  of  her  children,  and  to  the 
comfort  of  her  husband. 

I  am  not  unaware  of  the  difficulties  which 
will  beset  the  establishment  and  the  admin- 
istration of  such  an  agency  as  this.  At  first, 
no  doubt  there  will  be  some  friction,  until 
the  purpose,  the  advantages  and  the  limita- 
tions of  the  plan  are  properly  understood. 
But  both  sides  will  learn  to  adjust  them- 
selves to  the  new  order,  and  the  supervising 
authorities  will  obtain  a  chart  of  the  rocks 
they  have  to  avoid. 

Nor  are  there  wanting  indications  that  we 
are  already  approaching  a  co-operative  sys- 
tem of  this  kind.  In  some  of  the  towns  of 
New  England  one  woman  takes  charge  of 

127 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

all  the  lamps  in  the  homes ;  another  of  all  the 
darning  and  mending;  and  so  on.  In  several 
great  houses  of  New  York  the  care  of  the 
pictures,  the  bric-a-brac  and  the  like,  is  put 
into  the  hands  of  capable  women,  who  serve 
a  number  of  families  in  this  way.  In  our 
cities  generally  it  is  usual  to  employ  one  man 
to  attend  in  several  houses  to  work  too  rough 
or  too  severe  for  the  women  servants.  We 
also  have  cleaning  companies,  who  send 
their  experts  when  called  by  telephone,  and 
charge  for  this  by  the  hour.  It  requires 
but  the  unification  and  enlargement  of  such 
methods  to  give  us  the  agency  for  domestic 
service. 

2.  Along  with  this  reform  will  go  such  a 
simplification  of  the  work  of  the  household 
as  will  greatly  reduce  the  amount  of  service 
required.  As  I  already  have  shown,  a  great 
part  of  the  progress  of  the  home  in  its 
adaptation  to  the  natural  family,  has  con- 

128 


ITS  ORGANIZATION 

sisted  in  the  removal  of  industries  not  essen- 
tial to  its  comfort.  Most  are  gone,  but 
several  remain. 

(a)  The  heating  of  the  house  is  managed 
in  most  cases  by  the  burning  of  coal  inside 
the  house,  with  bad  results  both  to  the  health 
of  the  inmates,  and  to  the  purse  of  the  house- 
holder.   In  America  the  Universities  found 
that  they  could  not  afford  the  waste  this 
involved,  and  they  now  are  heated  from  a 
central  plant  through  all  their  buildings.   In 
several  districts  of  our  cities  the  same  method 
is  employed,  and  also  in  some  great  indus- 
trial establishments,  where  the  business  is 
not  such  as  to  supply  heat.     The  day  will 
come  when  not  a  piece  of  coal  will  be  taken 
into  a  private  house,  unless  it  is  to  be  added 
to  a  collection  of  minerals. 

(b)  The  cooking  of  food  must  be  taken 
from  the  house,  and  conducted  in  large  co- 

9  129 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

operative    kitchens,    by   men    and    not    by 
women. 

This  last  point  is  essential.  There  has 
been  no  greater  blunder  in  our  household 
administration  than  the  imposition  of  the 
burden  of  cooking  upon  a  sex,  which  has 
no  natural  fitness  for  it.  The  preparation 
of  food  in  forms  at  once  attractive  to  all  our 
senses,  and  wholesome  for  our  sustenance, 
is  a  scientific  problem;  and  women  have  not 
the  scientific  mind.  They  naturally  take 
hold  of  every  such  question  by  the  personal 
side.  They  give  us  not  what  will  be  best 
for  us,  but  what  they  know  we  will  like  the 
best.  Hence  the  wide  diffusion  of  dyspepsia 
in  civilized  countries.  Hence  also  the  com- 
plaints of  young  husbands  that  their  wives 
do  not  come  up  to  their  mothers  in  the  mak- 
ing of  toothsome  things.  In  fact  their 
mothers  had  spoiled  their  digestions  before 
their  wives  got  a  fair  show. 

130 


ITS  ORGANIZATION 

History  supports  my  contention  here.  On 
the  Egyptian  monuments  there  are  many 
pictures    of    cooks    at   work,    but    never   a 
woman  among  them.    In  the  Homeric  poems 
the   Greek  heroes   prepare   their   banquets 
with  their  own  hands,  even  where  there  are 
women    within    call.       So    of    the    Bible. 
Abraham  does  not  bid  Sarah  prepare  a  meal 
for  his  three  mysterious  guests.     He  tells 
her  to  make  flour  cakes  for  them,  but  he  him- 
self makes  ready  their  repast  (Genesis,  xviii, 
6-8 ) .    An  unnamed  prophet  of  the  time  of 
Manasseh  indicates  a  farther  extension  of 
masculine  responsibility  in  the  matter.    He 
makes  Jehovah  say,  "  I  will  wipe  Jerusalem 
as  a  man  wipeth  a  dish,  wiping  it  and  turn- 
ing it  upside  down"    (2   Kings,  xxi,   13). 
And  even  in  modern  times,  when  it  is  a. ques- 
tion of  cooking  for  a  palace,  an  army,  or  a 
great   hotel,   nobody   thinks   of   calling   in 
women  to  do  it.    It  always  is  a  chef  that  is 

131 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

employed;  and  there  is  no  feminine  of  that 
French  noun. 

Nor  do  women  spontaneously  undertake 
to  be  cooks.  The  most  zealous  asserters  of 
female  equality  are  modest  at  this  point.  In 
a  biographical  dictionary  of  "  Eminent 
Women  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,"  edited 
by  women,  not  one  is  named  who  attained 
eminence  as  a  cook.  In  M.  Vapereau's 
"  Dictionnaire  des  Contemporains  "  a  good 
number  of  men  are  described  as  eminent  in 
this  field.  Apicius,  Vatal,  Brillat-Savarin, 
Savourin,  Careme,  Soyer,  and  the  rest  were 
not  of  the  gentler  sex. 

It  has  been  objected  that  with  the  estab- 
lishment of  co-operative  cooking,  the  family 
meal  will  disappear,  to  the  great  loss  of 
sociability.  There  is  no  necessity  for  any 
such  loss.  The  new  order  can  be  so  man- 
aged as  to  secure  both  preference  in  the 
choice  of  food,  and  its  service  at  home  at  any 

132 


ITS  ORGANIZATION 

hour  that  is  desired,  as  warm  and  as  palat- 
able as  at  present. 

This  is  made  possible  by  a  very  simple 
contrivance,  which  will  keep  food  warm  dur- 
ing its  transmission  to  almost  any  distance. 
It  is  called  in  France  the  Norwegian  kitchen, 
and  is  used  by  the  workingmen  of  Paris.  It 
consists  of  an  outer  tin  can  lined  with  felt 
and  an  inner  can  which  fits  it  closely.  The 
workman's  wife  puts  his  soup  into  the  inner 
can,  and  "brings  it  to  the  boil "  on  the  fire. 
She  then  shuts  it  into  the  outer  can,  where  it 
goes  on  cooking  until  her  husband's  dinner- 
time. The  Germans  use  the  same  contriv- 
ance to  economize  fuel,  and  to  secure  slow 
and  thorough  cooking.  By  an  extension  of 
this  contrivance,  a  dinner  could  be  sent  a 
hundred  miles  without  losing  heat  or  flavor. 

The  co-operative  kitchen  will  enable  the 
application  of  both  science  and  economy  to 
the  art  of  cooking.  The  work  will  be  done 

133 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

under  the  direction  of  an  expert,  who  will 
make  purchases  with  regard  to  both  quality 
and  price,  and  will  buy  in  quantities  which 
will  secure  wholesale  rates.  He  will  demand 
of  his  subordinates  cleanliness,  thoroughness, 
and  the  watchfulness  which  will  prevent  the 
ruin  of  food.  The  thermometer,  the  clock, 
the  scales  and  other  instruments  of  precision 
will  control  operations  now  done  at  hap- 
hazard or  by  "  rule  of  thumb."  There  will 
be  a  scientific  economy  of  fuel  and  of  food- 
materials,  which  probably  will  cover  the  costs 
of  administration. 

This  is  not  merely  the  suggestion  of  plans 
unrealized.  Already  the  method  I  propose 
has  been  tested.  In  Bergen  (Norway)  co- 
operative cooking  has  been  in  use  for  the 
working-people  for  a  generation  past.  They 
can  no  longer  afford  to  have  their  cooking 
done  in  their  own  houses,  just  as  they  can- 
not afford  to  have  their  clothing  spun  and 

134 


ITS  ORGANIZATION 

woven  at  home.  There  also  have  been  suc- 
cessful experiments  in  Mobile  and  in  some 
places  in  the  West  Indias,  the  late  Dr.  John 
Fulton  told  me.  There  is,  indeed,  a  record 
of  failures,  each  of  them  due  to  the  fact  that 
the  experiment  was  left  in  the  hands  of 
women. 

The  disappearance  of  the  domestic  kitchen 
will  be  a  notable  relief  to  the  house-mistress, 
relieving  her  from  responsibility  for  burnt 
food,  ill-served  dishes,  and  the  endless  series 
of  disasters  attendant  in  so  many  cases  on 
domestic  cooking.  Especially  great  will  be 
the  boon  to  the  wife  of  the  working-man, 
who  now  is  compelled  to  do  her  cooking  her- 
self. Philadelphia  is  justly  proud  of  the 
myriads  of  small  houses,  built  by  her  work- 
ing people  through  their  building  associa- 
tions, and  amounting  in  value  to  one-fifth 
of  her  realty.  But  in  the  rear  of  every 
house  is  a  room  nearly  filled  by  a  cooking- 

135 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

stove,  where  the  mistress  of  the  house  de- 
stroys her  health,  temper  and  good  looks  in 
wasting  fuel  and  food.  Yet  one  co-opera- 
tive kitchen  would  do  the  work  for  several 
blocks  of  such  houses,  in  an  intelligent  and 
wholesome  way. 

What  shall  we  say  of  the  waste  involved  in 
the  activity  of  150,000  such  kitchens,  great 
and  small,  in  such  a  city,  each  of  them  pour- 
ing up  its  chimney  all  but  a  fraction  of  the 
caloric  contained  in  the  coal  they  consume? 
If  we  had  a  thousand  men  under  arms  to 
feed,  and  were  to  set  up  two  hundred 
kitchens  to  do  it,  we  should  be  thought  in- 
sane. Yet  for  every  thousand  in  a  city,  we 
have  that  number,  and  more. 

Yet  I  have  heard  men  say  that  "  if  you 
take  the  cooking  out  of  the  home,  you  have 
taken  out  the  comfort!"  So  their  grand- 
mothers felt  about  taking  the  spinning  out 
of  the  house.  So  others  have  felt  about 

136 


ITS  ORGANIZATION 

every  change  that  has  been  made  for  the 
improvement  of  the  home.  Nor  do  I  find 
this  altogether  blameworthy.  It  is  a  whole- 
some instinct  which  makes  us  reluctant  to 
leave  a  home  we  have  long  occupied  to  be- 
take ourselves  to  another,  even  if  it  be  a 
better.  It  is  a  foretaste  of  the  great  shrink- 
ing from  that  removal  from  life  to  life, 
which  we  all  must  undergo.  So  the  passage 
from  one  style  of  home  to  another  must  have 
been  attended  by  a.  struggle  at  every  stage, 
between  men's  instincts  and  their  judgment. 
Only  a  small  minority  of  men,  indeed, 
have  been  led  by  their  judgments  to  choose 
the  better,  and  having  drunk  the  old  wine, 
to  presently  desire  the  new.  The  majority, 
as  Sir  Henry  Sumner  Maine  says,  "have 
stereotyped  their  institutions."  They  have 
called  a  halt  at  an  early  stage  of  the  great 
march  of  civilization,  and  beyond  this  they 
will  not  move.  They  feel  about  changes 
from  worse  to  better,  as  a  man  might  feel, 

1ST 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

whom  you  had  wakened  out  of  a  deep  sleep 
to  put  a  softer  pillow  under  his  head. 

But  "  the  better  is  the  enemy  of  the  good;" 
and  the  people  who  have  come  thus  far  in  the 
upward  march,  will  not  stop  where  they  are. 
Our  "  comfort,"  which  often  means  no  more 
than  contentment  with  what  we  are  used  to 
seeing  and  having,  will  not  suffice  as  a  motive 
for  stopping  the  march,  especially  when  so 
much  is  at  stake. 

More  worthy  of  attention  is  the  objection 
that  "  there  will  be  nothing  left  for  women 
to  do,"  after  these  changes  have  been 
wrought.  Everything  will  be  left,  which 
belongs  to  woman's  functions  as  mother, 
sister  and  wife.  She  will  have  the  oppor- 
tunity to  become  more  truly  the  home-maker 
of  the  race,  when  she  no  longer  has  to  enlist 
a  body  of  servants,  to  supervise  their  work, 
and  to  carry  on  some  half-dozen  of  trades, 
which  can  be  better  attended  to  outside  the 
house.  She  will  have  more  time  to  give  to 

138 


ITS  ORGANIZATION 

her  children,  in  that  great  education  which 
precedes  the  school,  and  on  which  that  of  the 
school  and  of  life  so  much  depends.  She 
will  no  longer  leave  to  schools  and  to  school- 
teachers what  should  be  her  joy — the  train- 
ing of  her  children  in  morals  and  manners. 
She  will  have  time  to  keep  herself  abreast  of 
her  husband  in  knowledge  of  what  the  world 
is  doing,  and  in  acquaintance  of  the  best  that 
has  been  said  by  the  wisest  men.  She  will 
no  longer  dismiss  the  larger  interests  of  life 
with  the  assumption  of  the  wedding-ring. 
She  will  have  something  else  to  talk  of  than 
the  worries  of  domestic  management,  of 
which  he  soon  grows  sick  and  tired.  She 
will  have  time  for  social  duties,  especially 
toward  her  actual  neighbors,  rich  and  poor, 
whom  she  is  fitted  to  aid  and  comfort.  She 
will  have  room  to  be  more  of  a  woman  and 
less  of  a  drudge  than  society  at  present 
allows  her  to  be. 

139 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  HOUSE  THAT  Is  To  BE:  ITS 
EQUIPMENT 

1.  THE  cleaning  of  the  house  is  a  matter 
which  concerns  health,  comfort  and  economy. 
It  is  in  modern  times  only  that  the  impor- 
tance of  this  has  been  recognized;  but  even 
we  have  been  very  slow  to  apply  the  methods 
which  mechanical  science  has  put  within 
reach. 

The  carpet-sweeper  was  the  first  applica- 
tion of  mechanism  to  the  task,  and  it  left 
much  to  be  desired.  The  besom,  the  broom, 
the  feather-duster,  and  the  like,  all  belong 
to  one  stock,  and  exhibit  the  same  defects. 
They  leave  nearly  as  much  dirt  behind  as 
they  remove;  and  they  often  do  more  harm 
than  good  by  transferring  a  great  portion 
of  the  dust  from  the  floor  we  walk  on  to  the 
air  we  breathe. 

140 


ITS  EQUIPMENT 

The  suggestion  of  cleaning  by  an  exhaust 
apparatus,  or  by  suction,  was  made  by  an 
obscure  inventor  more  than  half  a  century 
ago,  and  nothing  came  of  it.  It  was  sug- 
gested more  recently  by  the  application  of 
the  exhaust  method  in  some  processes  of 
manufacture.  Thus  the  fine  particles  of  sand 
and  steel,  which  are  ground  off  in  sharpening 
cutlery  on  a  grindstone,  are  drawn  into  an 
exhaust-chamber,  and  the  steel  separated 
from  the  sand  by  magnets,  that  it  may  be 
worked  over  again.  So  in  cotton-factories 
the  "  flowings  "  of  the  cotton  are  drawn  off 
in  the  same  way,  and  utilized. 

My  experience  as  a  university  librarian  in 
the  early  years  of  1870-80  led  me  to  desire 
some  such  apparatus  for  the  cleaning  of  the 
books.  I  began  to  advocate  cleaning  by 
suction  for  both  homes  and  libraries,  and 
even  streets,  in  my  public  lectures.  This 
was  regarded  at  first  as  a  fad  of  no  practical 

141 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

value.  But  now  the  method  has  come  into 
large  use,  though  on  a  limited  scale.  Like 
Dr.  Edward  Everett  Hale,  I  begin  to  re- 
gard myself  as  "  one  of  the  minor  prophets, 
—a  very  minor  prophet!"1 

The  new  Congressional  Library  at  Wash- 
ington realizes  my  dream  by  cleaning  its 
books  by  an  exhaust  apparatus.  Several 
of  our  large  railroads  use  it  in  cleaning  their 
passenger-cars.  And  at  last  it  has  come 
into  use  for  cleaning  houses  in  the  cities  of 
Germany  and  America,  in  two  ways.  In 
the  first  a  big  automobile  is  run  to  the  front 
of  the  house,  and  flexible  rubber  tubes  are 
introduced  through  the  windows  of  the 

1  Dr.  Hale's  claim  was  based  on  a  sentence  in  his  "  Sybaris 
and  Other  Homes"  (1869),  in  which  he  makes  his  Colonel 
Ingham  say  that  when  the  street-cars  of  that  admirable  city 
have  received  their  proper  number  of  passengers,  the 
mules  are  detached,  and  the  cars  are  conveyed  to  their 
destination  by  power  supplied  from  a  central  engine.  A 
gentleman  interested  in  street-cars  wrote  to  Dr.  Hale 
to  ask  how  it  was  done,  and  received  the  answer  that 
Colonel  Ingham  had  not  explained  that. 
142 


ITS  EQUIPMENT 

second  story.  Through  these  the  exhaust 
pumps  outside  draw  off  the  dust  and  loose 
dirt  from  every  part  of  the  house  in  turn, 
and  it  is  carried  off  for  use  in  florists'  seed- 
beds. The  second  method  applies  the  ex- 
haust process  to  a  smaller  apparatus,  oper- 
ated by  an  electric  current  within  the  house 
itself.  Where  no  such  current  is  obtainable,, 
other  machines  offer  to  supply  the  power 
by  the  labor  of  hand  or  foot ;  but  this  is  toil- 
some, and  hardly  efficient. 

These  devices  are  but  prophecies  of  better 
things  yet  to  come.  They  enable  us  to  look 
forward  with  confidence  to  a  time  when  this 
method  of  cleaning  will  be  applied  to  the 
homes  and  the  streets  of  a  whole  city,  just 
as  in  the  supply  of  water.  This,  of  course, 
would  require  a  general  and  permanent  sys- 
tem of  piping,  to  connect  every  room  in  the 
houses  with  powerful  exhaust  engines  out- 
side the  city.  When  a  room  is  to  be  cleaned, 
us 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

the  operator  will  connect  these  metal  pipes 
with  a  flexible  tube,  terminating  in  a  proper 
metal  mouthpiece,  and,  by  going  over  every 
point,  send  the  dust  not  only  out  of  the  house, 
but  out  of  town. 

The  location  of  the  sites  of  these  ex- 
haustion-engines will  be  a  matter  of  impor- 
tance. There  are  few  cities  which  have  not 
in  their  neighborhood  places  of  low  grade 
and  damp  soil,  where  the  dust  might  be  used 
to  level  the  surface,  and  enable  the  use  of 
the  new  level  for  the  erection  of  buildings, 
after  thorough  drainage.  The  utilization  of 
this  arch-enemy  dust,  this  by-product  of 
our  civilization,  to  extend  the  city  instead  of 
burying  it,  would  be  a  great  gain  to  most  of 
our  cities.  The  flats  we  pass  in  approaching 
New  York  from  the  southwest,  for  instance, 
are  at  present  hopeless.  It  is  said  that 
Horace  Greeley  spent  nights  in  studying 
them,  to  ascertain  the  possibility  of  utilizing 

144 


ITS  EQUIPMENT 

them  as  sites  for  homes  for.  the  workingmen. 
But  if  the  dust  and  loose  dirt  of  the  city, 
instead  of  being  thrown  into  the  sea,  were 
to  be  used  in  raising  those  flats  above  tide 
water,  within  forty  years  the  problem  would 
be  solved. 

The  streets  of  our  cities  undergo  an  opera- 
tion called  cleaning  which  leaves  them  almost 
as  dirty  as  before  it  is  done.  Mostly  it  is 
with  brooms  and  scrapers,  and  a  consider- 
able amount  of  dirt  is  removed;  but  it  is 
hardly  missed  when  the  wind  blows,  after  a 
drying  period,  and  the  dust  whirls  along 
into  our  houses,  our  eyes  and  our  throats. 
Nor  is  anything  better  effected  by  the  use 
of  mechanical  brushes,  fastened  to  a  frame- 
work drawn  by  horses.  These  are  meant 
to  bring  the  dirt  from  the  centre  of  the 
street  to  the  gutters,  and  thus  facilitate  its 
removal.  It  would  not  be  fair  to  say  they 
do  no  good ;  but  it  is  certain  that  they  do  not 
give  us  clean  streets. 

10  145 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

What  we  need  here  also  is  the  application 
of  the  exhaust-engine  to  the  streets  as  well 
as  the  houses.  By  a  steady  application  of 
this  we  might  make  our  streets  the  envy  of 
the  country-folk,  with  their  dusty  roads  and 
muddy  lanes.  But  this  would  require  the 
entire  banishment  of  the  horse  from  the  city. 
Our  asphalt  pavements  have  made  us  see 
the  extent  to  which  that  quadruped  is  a  con- 
tributor to  the  refuse  of  our  streets. 

I  do  not  speak  with  the  same  confidence  in 
suggesting  that  the  exhaust  engine  might  be 
applied  to  the  ventilation  of  our  city  houses. 
It  has  been  used  with  success  to  the  supply 
of  fresh  air  to  many  business  houses  and 
offices;  and  it  might  be  so  used  through  the 
whole  city.  The  reduction  of  fires  to  the 
number  required  for  co-operative  cooking, 
heating  and  the  generation  of  power,  and  the 
prevention  of  waste  in  these  by  the  scientific 
use  of  coal,  would  go  far  to  purify  the  air 

146 


ITS  EQUIPMENT 

of  our  cities  from  the  noxious  gases  gener- 
ated in  our  waste  of  that  mineral.  The  ex- 
tent to  which  we  now  suffer  from  this  is  in- 
dicated by  the  fretting  and  darkening  of 
marble  fronts,  even  where  no  smoke  has 
been  affecting  them  directly.  Yet  under  the 
new  conditions  it  might  be  advisable  to  erect 
a  tall  chimney  at  the  centre  of  every  block 
of  houses,  and  to  bring  down  fresh  air  into 
the  houses,  from  a  higher  and  cooler  stratum. 

2.  The  supply  of  electric  force  to  the  city 
house  falls  far  short  of  what  is  possible  and 
desirable. 

(a)  The  sewing-machine  is  still  worked 
by  the  operator's  hand  or  foot,  mostly  the 
latter.  The  result  is  often  injurious  to  her 
health,  especially  when  everything  below  the 
table-board  is  made  of  iron.  She  is  then 
employing  the  heat  of  her  body  in  warming 
this  mass  of  cold  metal.  I  may  add  in  pass- 
ing that  the  same  objection  applies  to  school 

147 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

desks  and  seats,  in  whose  construction  iron 
is  freely  used.  They  should  be  of  wood 
throughout,  as  are  those  of  our  Philadelphia 
high  schools. 

(6)  The  substitution  of  the  safety  lift  (or 
elevator)  for  the  staircase  will  require  a  sup- 
ply of  electric  force.  At  present  the  elevator 
is  associated  in  many  minds  with  ugly  and 
even  fatal  accidents.  Hardly  one  of  these 
but  might  have  been  avoided  by  such  a  con- 
struction  of  machinery,  as  is  seen  in  the 
safety  elevators  of  continental  Europe.  The 
type  of  elevator  there  evolved  is  less  slow 
than  the  English  lift,  and  less  rapid  than  the 
American  flyer.  It  seems  to  reduce  risk  to 
the  vanishing  point. 

Woman  especially  will  have  reason  to  be 
gratified  by  the  substitution  of  the  elevator 
for  the  staircase.  On  her  falls  mainly  the 
business  of  climbing  from  story  to  story,  in 
the  management  of  her  house.  Whether 

148 


ITS  EQUIPMENT 

with  or  without  a  burden,  she  is  unfitted  by 
her  physiological  structure  for  that  sort  of 
effort. 

(c)  The  electric  fan  has  come  into  exten- 
sive use  for  cooling  offices  and  other  places 
of  business,  but  not  largely  for  that  service 
in  houses.     The  usefulness  of  the  ordinary 
fan  as  a  cooler  is  discounted  somewhat  by 
the  generation  of  bodily  heat  in  the  exercise. 
The  electric  fan  avoids  this.     Something  of 
the  same  sort  is  needed  in  churches  and  other 
places  of  assemblage  in  summer,  but  less  in 
evidence  and  less  clumsy  than  the  punkah 
used  in  the  East. 

(d)  The  introduction   of  the  telephone 
into  our  houses  has  been  not  only  a  great 
convenience,    but    a   promotion    of   mental 
health.     The  solitary  farmhouses  of  Great 
Britain    and    America,    by    isolating    the 
women  who  reside  in  them  from  human  fel- 
lowship through  a  large  part  of  the  working 

149 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

day,  do  much  harm.  It  is  said  that  more 
wives  and  daughters  of  farmers  lose  their 
reason,  than  do  women  of  any  other  class. 
But  a  notable  change  has  been  wrought  by 
the  telephone,  which  enables  a  woman  to 
talk  with  her  friends  and  neighbors  without 
leaving  her  house.  In  many  parts  of 
America  the  whole  body  of  houses  in  a 
neighborhood  often  is  equipped  with  this 
beneficent  instrument.  It  is  said  for  in- 
stance, that  every  house  on  Block  Island  is 
furnished  with  a  telephone,  so  that  in  the 
bleakest  winter  its  people  can  talk  freely 
with  any  one  on  the  island.  In  our  cities  the 
use  of  the  telephone  advances  rapidly,  but 
we  are  still  far  from  having  this  universal 
enjoyment  of  it,  and  the  public  "  pay-tele- 
phones "  indicate  this.  Here  is  room  for  an 
improvement  of  no  small  importance. 

Nor  are  the  uses  of  the  electric  wire  to  the 
family  to  be  confined  to  private  messages 

150 


ITS  EQUIPMENT 

from  neighbor  to  neighbor.  A  recent  inven- 
tion makes  it  possible  to  establish  in  every 
house  a  music  room,  in  which  its  inmates 
may  enjoy  at  any  hour  of  the  afternoon  and 
evening  whatever  quality  of  music  they  pre- 
fer, as  played  at  that  time  by  a  competent 
musician  at  a  musical  centre. 

A  telephonic  device  for  transmission  of 
the  news  has  been  introduced  recently  for 
the  service  of  the  blind.  May  not  the  day 
come  when  the  march  of  improvement  will 
have  rendered  the  newspaper  obsolete  for 
those  who  see,  by  repeating  to  us  at  the 
breakfast  table  the  really  important  facts 
of  the  world's  happenings? 

These  are  a  part  only  of  the  mechanical 
changes  for  the  better  adaptation  of  the 
House  to  the  needs  of  the  Family,  to  which 
we  may  look  forward.  They  probably  will 
meet  with  less  resistance  than  will  the  social 
changes  advocated  in  the  previous  chapter. 

151 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

The  modern  world  is  less  sceptical  of  me- 
chanical than  of  social  progress. 

The  two  together  should  make  housekeep- 
ing more  attractive  and  less  costly  to  the 
coming  generations.  They  certainly  will 
have  the  advantage  of  enabling  those  genera- 
tions to  ascertain  in  advance,  and  with  more 
exactness,  the  actual  cost  of  having  a  home, 
and  thus  remove  an  uncertainty  which  is 
more  deterrent  than  any  foreseen  drawback. 
Thus  the  social  drift  toward  the  apartment- 
house  will  be  diverted  to  a  more  wholesome 
home-life,  with  its  privacy  and  its  substan- 
tial joys.  No  greater  social  service  could 
be  rendered  to  the  modern  world. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  STREETS  OF  THE  FUTURE 

As  has  appeared  more  than  once  from  the 
history  I  have  given  of  the  House,  it  is  not 
possible  to  regard  it  as  independent  of  its 
surroundings.  This  is  especially  true  of  the 
town-house,  whose  relations  with  the  street 
on  which  it  stands,  are  intimate  and 
important. 

1.  The  present  facilities  for  rapid  travel 
make  it  a  question  whether  there  is  any  need 
to  build  the  residential  districts  of  a  large 
city  in  the  compact  order  which  has  been 
usual  hitherto.  When  William  Penn  laid 
out  Philadelphia,  on  a  suggestion  taken 
from  the  account  of  Babylon  in  Herodotus, 
he  planned  that  every  house  should  be 
placed  in  a  garden,  so  that  the  citizens  should 
not  forfeit  the  advantages  of  the  country  life 

153 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

in  the  matter  of  fresh  air  and  the  com- 
panionship of  the  trees  and  plants.  The 
plan  was  impossible  under  such  conditions 
as  arose  when  the  city  became  an  important 
port  of  entry.  But  the  suggestion  might 
well  be  heeded  in  the  erection  of  new  cities 
under  modern  conditions. 

It  ought  to  be  possible  for  the  greater  part 
of  the  city's  population  to  live  within  easy 
reach  of  their  places  of  business,  and  yet  in 
the  rural  atmosphere,  which  means  whole- 
some air  and  soothing  quiet  during  the  hours 
of  sleep.  This  is  now  the  privilege  of  the 
comparatively  wealthy,  and  is  probably  the 
most  solid  advantage  that  riches  bring  them. 
But  there  is  no  reason  for  a  monopoly  of  it 
by  them.  Their  search  for  fresh  and  peace- 
ful surroundings  is  but  the  expression  of  a 
popular  instinct,  which  stirs  in  all  of  us,  and 
which  will  find  a  reasonable  gratification  in 
the  future.  At  present  it  is  pathetic  to 

154 


STREETS  OF  THE  FUTURE 

watch  the  first  contact  with  the  country 
which  many  city  children  obtain  in  the 
"  country- week  "  holidays  now  devised  for 
them. 

Until  that  change  comes  more  pains 
should  be  taken  to  diminish  the  drawbacks 
of  life  among  our  "  Saharas  of  brick  and 
mortar,"  as  Carlyle  called  London.  The  in- 
crease of  open  spaces,  and  especially  of  play- 
grounds for  the  children  of  the  city,  is  now 
recognized  as  a  public  necessity.  London 
has  more  than  three  hundred  of  these, 
mostly  old  churchyards  cleared  of  their 
tombstones,  levelled,  and  equipped  with  a 
simple  gymnastic  apparatus.  The  larger 
American  cities  have  been  moving  in  the 
same  direction,  and  New  York  has  led  the 
way  in  converting  house-roofs  into  play- 
grounds. 

The  lining  of  the  streets  with  trees 
seems  to  have  been  another  of  William 

155 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

Penn's  ideas,  and  Philadelphia  was  once 
known  as  "the  sylvan  city'"  for  this  reason, 
and  because  its  leading  streets  took  the 
names  of  the  trees.  Hence  Longfellow's 
beautiful  reference — 

In  that  delightful  land,  which  is  washed  by  the 

Delaware's  waters, 
Guarding  in  sylvan  shades  the  name  of  Penn  the 

apostle, 
Stands  on  the  banks  of  its  beautiful  stream  the 

city  he  founded. 
There  all  the  air  is  balm,  and  the  peach  is  the 

emblem   of  beauty. 
And  the  streets  still  re-echo  the  names  of  the  trees 

of  the  forest, 
As  if  they  fain  would  appease  the  Dryads  whose 

haunts  they  molested. 

But  the  encroachment  of  electric  wires, 
and  the  cutting  off  the  natural  supply  of 
water  by  asphalt  pavements,  have  denuded 
our  streets  generally.  The  Japanese  am- 
pelopsis  serves  to  alleviate  the  glare  from 

156 


STREETS  OF  THE  FUTURE 

heated  walls,  and  supplies  the  element  of 
natural  beauty ;  but  it  is  not  commonly  used 
where  it  is  most  needed,  in  the  poorer  parts 
of  the  city.  Every  green  leaf  within  a  city 
is  a  means  of  freshening  the  air,  and  com- 
forting humanity. 

2.  The  substitution  of  automobile  travel 
and  conveyance  of  goods,  for  the  use  of 
horses,  is  not  yet  complete;  but  it  advances 
so  rapidly  as  to  indicate  that  this  is  to  be 
the  only  means  of  transportation  in  the  near 
future.  This  will  require  great  modifica- 
tions in  the  densely  peopled  parts  of  the 
city.  It  will  make  the  streets  increasingly 
difficult  to  foot-passengers,  especially  to  the 
timid  and  the  aged.  Already  they  are 
almost  as  perilous  as  the  tracks  of  a  crowded 
railroad,  and  they  are  sure  to  grow  worse. 

The  remedy  I  would  suggest  is  the  trans- 
fer of  the  sidewalks  to  the  second  story  of 
the  houses  throughout  the  closely  built  dis- 

157 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

tricts.  Watergate  Row  in  Chester  is  an  in- 
stance of  this  arrangement,  and  the  beauty 
of  the  old  houses,  constructed  in  this  way  to 
escape  the  marauding  raids  of  the  Welsh  in 
the  Middle  Ages,  shows  that  the  plan  would 
not  interfere  with  fine  architectural  effects. 
For  our  modern  need,  we  should  have  to 
connect  these  elevated  sidewalks  with 
bridges  at  the  crossing  of  streets,  while  at 
every  corner  there  would  be  a  landing-place 
to  enable  foot-passengers  to  come  down  to 
the  street  level,  to  reach  an  electric  car  or 
an  automobile.  An  additional  advantage 
would  be  the  protection  of  the  sidewalk  by 
the  projecting  third  story,  making  foot- 
passengers  independent  of  the  weather; 
while  the  travelling  machines  on  the  street 
could  move  at  any  rate  of  speed  consistent 
with  the  avoidance  of  collisions. 

3.  The  proper  pavement  for  the  streets  of 
a  city  is  still  a  moot-point.    The  Macadam- 

158 


STREETS  OF  THE  FUTURE 

ized  road  was  by  no  means  the  worst,  but  it 
is  now  impossible  through  the  raising  of 
dust  by  automobiles.  The  cobble-stone 
pavement  is  still  older,  and  vastly  worse, 
having  long  been  the  torture  of  horses,  and 
the  discomfort  of  men,  in  the  time  when  it 
extended  to  the  sidewalks  as  well  as  the  road. 
"Belgian  blocks"  of  granite  have  not  ful- 
filled the  prophecy  of  their  friends,  as  they 
are  severe  on  horses,  and  are  apt  to  grow 
rough  and  irregular.  Bricks  placed  edge- 
wise are  too  slippery  in  frosty  weather,  and 
like  granite  are  always  inelastic.  Asphalt 
has  many  merits,  among  others  that  it  makes 
street  barricades  difficult  if  not  impossible, 
as  was  foreseen  by  M.  Haussmann  when  he 
laid  it  on  the  streets  of  Paris.  But  it  is 
deadly  to  trees,  reflects  the  glare  of  the  sun 
as  does  a  brick  wall,  and  is  also  hard  on 
horses'  feet.  Thus  far  wood-blocks  set  in 
tar  appear  the  best  material  in  sight,  and 

159 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

have  stood  severe  tests  on  both  sides  of  the 
Atlantic.  They  also  have  the  merit  of  being 
less  noisy:  the  reduction  of  noise  in  our 
streets  is  one  of  our  most  urgent  necessities. 

Any  kind  of  street  pavement  might  very 
well  be  supplemented  by  flat  metal  plates  at 
the  distance  which  now  separates  car-rails, 
each  curving  downward  at  the  centre  just 
enough  to  make  wheels  stay  in  them,  but  not 
enough  to  subject  axles  to  a  strain  in  turn- 
ing out.  These  would  take  the  place  of  the 
heavy  and  ugly  rails  now  used  by  the  street- 
car lines,  which  break  the  surface  of  the 
street  far  more  than  is  necessary. 

4.  The  sewers  of  a  great  city,  as  Victor 
Hugo  shows  us  of  Paris,  form  a  world  by 
themselves.  This  generally  has  been  a  world 
rife  with  perils  to  those  who  live  in  the  day- 
light world  above  them,  both  through  the 
generation  and  diffusion  of  noisome  gases, 
and  through  their  serving  as  the  home  of 

160 


STREETS  OF  THE  FUTURE 

countless  rats.  These  evils  are  so  great,  and 
so  much  connected  with  the  diffusion  of 
epidemics,  that  some  even  have  expressed 
their  preference  for  the  old-fashioned  sewer, 
which  ran  down  the  middle  of  the  open 
street. 

The  city  of  the  future  will  have  to  deal 
with  this  under- street  system  more  vigor- 
ously than  in  the  past.  It  will  see  that  its 
refuse  is  carried  swiftly  and  harmlessly  to 
its  destination,  and  transformed  into  a  fer- 
tilizer. But  this  need  not  be  the  only  use  to 
which  this  underground  passage  shall  be  put. 
Electric  wires  of  all  sorts,  gas-pipes,  and 
the  like,  should  be  placed  there,  so  as  to  be 
reached  easily  for  repairs,  and  to  avoid  tear- 
ing up  the  streets  for  alterations  of  any 
kind.  Thus  will  disappear  the  unsightly 
tangle  of  overhead  wires — telephonic,  tele- 
graphic and  dynamic — which  now  disfigure 
many  of  our  cities.  And  by  the  city's  ex- 

11  161 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

haust  engines  the  sewers  will  be  cleared  of 
sewer-gas,  which  often  is  almost  the  despair 
of  the  architect  and  the  plumber. 

Such  suggestions  might  be  prolonged  to 
much  greater  length,  but  I  have  already 
sketched  what  to  many  may  seem  a  revolu- 
tionary programme.  It  would  be  so,  if  all 
these  things  were  undertaken  at  once.  They 
belong  to  a  vista  of  gradual  alterations, 
which  will  bring  about  not  only  the  comfort 
of  the  few,  but  the  common  advantage  of  all. 


CHAPTER  IX 

CONCLUSION 

No  external  feature  of  man's  life  is  more 
important  to  his  growth  in  character  and 
comfort  than  is  his  home.  This  is  the  space 
enclosed  from  the  world,  within  which  love 
works  its  miracles,  as  the  old  wizard  drew 
the  magic  circle  around  him,  before  he  under- 
took to  work  wonders.  Here  men  learned 
the  law  of  mutual  service  and  kindly  help, 
when  all  out  of  doors  was  full  of  conflict, 
rapine,  and  cruelty.  Here  the  domestic 
pets,  the  dog  and  the  cat,  entered  the  circle 
of  human  interest  as  the  poor  relations  of 
our  race.  Here  the  kindly  ministrations  of 
fire  and  water  began.  The  former  espe- 
cially marked  our  human  dignity  in  the 
mastery  of  what  was  a  terror  to  every  other 
form  of  animate  life,  but  to  us  a  faithful 
servant.  The  great  Hellenic  myth  of 

163 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

Prometheus,  who  stole  fire  from  heaven  for 
the  sake  of  man,  marks  the  sense  men  had 
of  the  value  of  this  ennobling  gift.  Men 
alone  kindle  and  feed  the  fire;  and  for  ages 
the  fireside  was  but  another  name  for  home. 
And  the  most  progressive  of  mankind 
hardly  can  escape  the  feeling  that  something 
was  lost  through  its  disappearance  from 
modern  arrangements. 

But  change  is  the  law  of  life,  on  our 
planet  at  least.  Some  welcome  it;  some  re- 
sist it;  all  must  bow  to  it.  The  Arabs  have 
a  mythical  tale  of  Chidher  the  Ever- Young, 
which  Friedrich  Riickert  has  rendered  into 
beautiful  German  verse.  I  give  it  in  the 
good  yet  not  quite  adequate  translation  of 
the  late  Moncton  Milnes,  the  first  Lord 
Houghton: 

Chidher  the  Prophet,  ever  young, 
Thus  loosed  the  bridle  of  his  tongue. 
164 


CONCLUSION 

I  journeyed  by  a  goodly  town,     . 

Beset  with  many  a  garden  fair, 

And  asked  with  one  who  gathered  down 

Large  fruit,  how  long  the  town  was  there. 

He  spoke,  nor  chose  his  hand  to  stay — 

"  The  town  has  stood  for  many  a  day, 

And  will  be  here  forever  and  aye." 

A  thousand  years  went  by  and  then 
I  went  the  selfsame  road  again. 

No  vestige  of  that  town  I  traced, 

But  one  poor  swain  his  horn  employed — 

His  sheep  unconscious  browsed  and  grazed; 

I  asked,  "When  was  that  town  destroyed?1 

He  spoke,  nor  would  his  horn  lay  by, 

"  One  thing  may  grow  and  another  die, 

But  I  know  nothing  of  towns — not  I." 

A  thousand  years  went  by,  and  then 
I  passed  the  selfsame  place  again. 

There  in  the  deep  of  waters  cast 
His  nets  one  lonely  fisherman, 
And  as  he  drew  them  up  at  last, 
I  asked  him  how  that  lake  began. 
He  looked  at  me  and  laughed  to  say, 
"  The  waters  spring  forever  and  aye, 
And  fish  are  plenty  every  day." 
165 


THE  DWELLING-HOUSE 

A  thousand  years  went  by,  and  then 
I  went  the  selfsame  road  again. 

I  found  a  country  wild  and  rude, 
And,  axe  in  hand,  beside  a  tree, 
The  hermit  of  that  solitude. 
I  asked  how  old  that  wood  might  be. 
He  spoke,  "  I  count  not  time  at  all, 
A  tree  may  rise,  a  tree  may  fall, 
The  forest  overlives  us  all." 

A  thousand  years  went  on,  and  then 
I  passed  the  selfsame  place  again. 

And  there  a  .glorious  city  stood, 

And  mid  tumultuous  market-cry, 

I  asked  when  rose  the  town,  where  wood, 

Pasture  and  lake  forgotten  lie. 

They  heard  me  not,  and  little  blame — 

For  them  the  world  is  as  it  came, 

And  all  things  must  be  still  the  same. 

A  thousand  years  shall  pass,  and  then 
I  mean  to  try  that  road  again. 

History  is  Chidher  the  ever  young.     Its 
message  is  that  what  we  have  come  to  regard 

166 


CONCLUSION 

as  permanent  features  of  our  lives,  is  the 
outcome  of  a  development,  which  has  its 
roots  in  the  remote  past,  but  which  will  not 
stay  its  growth  so  long  as  men  reach  out  to 
what  is  better  and  higher  than  they  have. 
And  in  no  field  of  human  life  is  this  more 
clearly  shown  than  in  the  evolution  of  the 
dwelling-house  from  the  primitive  tree  or 
cave,  to  the  palace. 


INDEX 


Africa,  21 

America's  old  houses,  10,  66, 

68,  91 
Apartment  houses,    118,    119, 

152 

Baeda,  41 

Baths  and  bath-houses,  52-54, 

93-95 

Beds,  22,  45,  48,  64,  65,  90,  91 
Belfry  (Berkfriet),  46,  47 
Bellows,  John,  26 
Bible: 

Ecclesiastes,  107 

Genesis,  19,  131 

Hosea,  58 

Jeremiah,  27 

Joshua,  108 

2.  Kings,  131 
Bower,  48-52,  92 
Brooke,  Stopford,  41 
Building  associations,  135 
Burgomaster's  stone,  74,  75 
Burmah,  22 

Caedmon,  41,  42 

Candles  and  candle-grease,  77, 

100 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  9,  13,  155 


Carpentry,  65-68 

Chaffering  of  buyer  and  seller, 

78,  79 

Chaucer,  51,  52,  66,  67 
Chester,  158 
Chidher  the  Ever-young,  164- 

166 

Child,  importance  of  the,  18,  19 
Chimney,  58-62,  79 
Cleaning  by  suction,  140-147 
Clocks  and  watches,  88,  89 
Cooking,   52,   53,   77,   92,   93, 

111-113,  129-136 
Co-operation,     119-121,     128- 

130 

Dasent,  Sir  George  Webbe,  36 
Denmark,  81,  82,  87 
Dust,  108,  109,  140,  143-145 
Dutch  cleanliness,  76,  80,  81, 
101 

Economy     in     house-keeping, 

119,  120,  123,  124 
Education,  39,  40,  69,  139 
Egyptian  monuments,  131 
Electric  power,   147-151,  157, 

158,  161 
Erasmus,  81 


169 


INDEX 


Tacitus,  72 
Taylor,  Jeremy,  62 
Telephones,  123,  149-151 
Telford,  Thomas,  103 
Teutonic  loyalty,  34 
Thomson,  James,  67 
Towns,  72-104 
Town-halls,  84 

Town-Middens,  75,  76,  80,  107 
Tree-dwellers,  19-23 
Tradesmen,  86,  89 
their  signs,  74 

Ulysses,  the  bed  of,  22 
Vapereau,  Gustave,  132 


Ventilation,  65,  106,  107,  146- 
147 

Viollet-Leduc,  Eugene  Emman- 
uel, 85 

Vitruvius,  59 

Washing-day,  95 
Water,  93,  98,  99 
West  Indies,  135 
Windows,  30,  39,  63,  87,  88, 

105,  110 
Woman's  work,  39,  48,  49,  77, 

97,  98,  138,  139 
Workshops,  69,  77-79,  89 

Xenophon,  28,  108 


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